Spellcast! The Get Along

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bill of Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

With me, as always, is Judge John Hodgman.

And Judge Hodgman, we also today have a very special friend of the court.

That is right, joining us from his home in undisclosed location, the wonderful John Darnell, singer, songwriter, novelist, actor in Ryan Johnson and Natasha Leon's famous television show Poker Face, and now here with us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Now, John Darnell, you know we love you.

Oh, thank you.

I love you too.

Let us be known that we love you.

And the Mountain Goats is your band.

You've got a new album out called Jenny from Thebes.

You're about to go on tour.

Everything's happening.

We're going to talk more about that a little later on.

But the reason you're here today is some time ago,

you revealed to me and to the world that you are really into Magic the Gathering, the card game, correct?

Some would say too into it, yes.

Yeah.

But because you love Magic the Gathering so much, we asked our listeners for Magic the Gathering-related disputes.

And boy, did we get them.

I was going to say, you really opened up a hornet's nest there.

We also asked Magic the Gathering if they would sponsor this episode, and they said no.

So as it happens.

Well, you know, Hasbro is on hard times right now.

They don't have a lot of.

That's true.

They don't have.

Yeah, that's right.

Everyone's ek and buy.

Everyone's just trying to make it.

So as it happens, John, all of these cases that you're about to hear, they may sound like they're about Magic the Gathering, but they're not.

That's what magic is.

Magic is like that.

Magic is also not necessarily about magic.

It's about having a good time with your friends.

It's about

storytelling.

It's about all kinds of different things.

No, I just mean to say all these cases are about a different game that I'm calling Spellcast the Get Along.

Oh, oh, is it Spellcast the Get Along?

Okay.

Spellcast

the Get Along.

Did you look this up?

Spellcaster is actually one of the apps that people

used to use to play magic online before they came up with their own client.

Spellcaster is a way you can play with your friend far away.

No, no connection.

And I have my attorneys working on that.

Yeah, unrelated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It may sound like these disputes are about Magic the Gathering.

It turns out...

They're actually about Spellcast the Get Along, a completely different game that is sponsoring this podcast.

That I've never played.

I think you'll find a lot of it is applicable.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Okay, Jesse, let's hear our first dispute about the totally real game, Spellcast the Get Along.

Here's something from Jeff in Pennsylvania.

My brother and I have a dispute about direct damage spells in the game Spellcast the Get Along.

Even Jesse, who does not play, is struggling with this one.

Direct damage spells have always been part of the game, but they were informally outlawed in our old regular game at the Philadelphia Comic Comic Shop back in 1996.

I have moved on from this rule.

My brother has not.

Now, when I deployed direct damage spells, my brother complains for the rest of the night or flings his cards across the room.

Who's right?

John Darnell,

much like Magic the Gathering, spellcast the get-along

is not just about playing a card game, but it's also about spending time with friends.

With friends, family.

Or your brother.

And is it cool to throw your cards across the room?

I mean, I don't want to issue a blanket rule stating that it's not sometimes totally cool to do that, but

I will say it compares to Monopoly.

That like, if you choose to play Monopoly with your family, you've already made a mistake.

You are making a choice, right?

There are other games you could play that will not erupt into arguments.

Magic is not.

Do I need to use the spellcast thing?

No, you can say whatever you want.

So with magic, it depends on what kind of player you are.

Like, I don't care if I lose.

I mean, I like to win, but I get rolled over constantly.

It does not bother me.

Plenty of people can't stand losing because when you lose, well, I had a bit that esteemed New York editor Sean McDonald

very gently talked me out of including in my book, which was.

That's the editor of your novels, the most recent one being Devil House.

Yes, Sean, he writes his own imprint, McD times FSG or X FSG.

But there was a long, there was a long

digression in part seven of the book, rather long, in which the rules of the game were explained.

And it was an extended metaphor about how

the goal of the game is usually to grind your opponent's life down to zero.

Nobody wants that.

Metaphorically or otherwise, nobody wants to see their life total reach zero.

However, there's other ways to play that are even they're even worse.

Direct damage spells are kind of a non-negotiable part of the game, though, is the thing.

you can't.

Yeah, explain what they explain what they are.

So it's called one way informally is damage to the face because you have these creatures

who are defending your life total.

Right.

Right.

So usually, if I'm trying to put, say, one point of damage at you, right, you have a creature who can block that, or you have a spell you can cast in response that can prevent it from happening.

Maybe.

In other words,

if you're dealing damage in this card game, I can play one of my creatures, say like an orc or a semi-centaur or whatever.

Or, yeah, or a rat or whatever, but the creatures will already be out there.

And I have creatures who have to be able to get them.

But

they'll take the hit for me.

They can block.

Sometimes they'll die in the process quite often, right?

But direct damage, there's a spell, a red, one...

a one mana spell called shock.

It's a very powerful, common card that deals two damage to any target.

Now, that target can, any target is a super powerful phrase.

That means I can put it to your creatures I can put it if you have what's called a planeswalker which is not a creature but who stands out on the board doing stuff I can put it at him or I can do it to the face which is to you right that's not a term in the game that's an informal term players use damage to the face is really kind of aggravating because unless you are playing the color blue unless you're playing control you probably can't prevent

the damage to the face so direct damage i was going to say jesse there's an ex there's an exception if you're playing the color blue yeah if you're playing control certainly But if you're just playing a rat.

He picks it up very quickly.

If you're just playing a rat, John.

Well, so rats are in

our black mana, which is swamps.

Each color of mana has its own sort of element.

Swamps, forces.

Let's just define the term mana M-A-N-A.

So mana is the sort of like the gas you use to pay for your spells, to pay for casting creatures, to pay for casting the spells that will deal direct damage, which are usually going to be instants and sorceries.

An instant I can cast at any time.

A sorcery I can usually only cast on my turn, right?

So, and yeah, and that's interesting because in

spellcast the get-along, yes, we call them spellos, spellos, spellos, yes, yeah, spellow coins.

Spellows.

Oh, this is the thing.

If we were actually going to do the full spellcast thing, the number of extra terms I would need to replace these things, it would take me three days to bone up on this stuff.

Now you're getting excited.

Now you understand the allure of spellcast the get-along.

Oh, yeah.

I'm getting a whole, yeah, you know, my spellows and my and my

pageos.

But yeah, so so there's these there's these things I can do in blue.

And mana is what is produced when I tap a land, right?

Each land

generally produces one mana by tapping it.

Right.

And

as you can see, this is math for people who were not good at math.

I've never learned how to play any of these games, whether it's magic or spellcast or whatever.

But I love hearing you talk.

I love hearing you talk about it.

Well, what's funny, this is one of the things that's satisfying about it.

Five years ago, if you'd have shown me the rules of this game, I would have said to you, Oh, I'm never going to understand this.

This is impossible, right?

You learn it as you play.

So it's exactly like soccer or baseball or something or hockey.

Generally speaking, if I sit down and try and explain hockey to you, Mr.

Hartford Whitler's cap, yeah, you will say, Oh, I'm not going to get this game.

Even the offsides rule seems impossible to understand when it's explained to you.

When you watch it played, then you say, Oh, I get it.

He can't pass it.

It's a two-line pass.

He can't do that, right?

Except I think, I think they eliminated that rule.

Yeah, I think now you did, which is like just, I, I, I, you know, I'm a cremudgeon, and I think when they change rules purportedly for faster play or whatever, I think, you know, Jesse, it's true that the one game, the one game that you do not want to know the rules to at all before you get into it is hockey.

Get out on the ice and just figure it out.

Just get on, you'll figure it out.

So,

why are they playing this game in such an unusually gentle manner in the unusually gentle city of Philadelphia?

Yeah,

in their old Philadelphia game, they banned these direct damage spells.

So they are expressing a taste for a play style, right?

And the best way I can explain this to you is with a different play style that they haven't banned, surprisingly, because direct damage, the problem is...

I can load up a bunch of direct damage spells that if you've chosen not to play control and most people are against control, as you might imagine, might be gathering.

I like to play control.

Yeah.

No, if there's one thing that is true about my life, I am not against control, very much to my mental ill health.

So, as I say, control is the color of

blue, islands, right?

There are players who, when they see you cast a turn one island, will immediately resign.

They don't want to play against that deck, right?

It's just not fun because what I do with my control deck is prevent you from playing your game, right?

You sling a direct damage spell at me, and I play a spell called negate, and I, and that stops stops you from doing what you tried to do and you wasted your spell you don't get it back right uh and and all i did was play on your turn i wait for you to try to do something and i stop you from doing it uh that's blue right uh direct damage however for those of us who like do you remember chiptune the era of music uh yeah

yeah and it was music that was very fast or or atari teenage riot that type of music right Direct damage is that style, where if you don't have the nerves for it, you're going to say, I didn't get a chance to do anything and already I'm down four, right?

And it's very aggravating to play all red decks.

This is all red mana.

So

what they're expressing at the kitchen table there is that they don't like that play style, that they'd rather you didn't play red.

But the mature opinion about this is that, like, look, there's a bunch of play styles banning an entire play style.

You might as well ban the color red if you can't do direct damage because that's what red does.

Or what might have been okay in 1996 in the comic book shop in Philadelphia.

Yes.

When you were kids, now in the year of our God or whatever, 2023,

going into 2024, maybe it's time for Jeff and his brother to play some direct damage.

Maybe so.

I mean, it's time for one of them to just start playing blue, and then there won't be any direct damage problem.

I'll tell you what, I heard about half of what you said because I was mostly writing down new names for mountain goat songs based on phrases you were saying, starting with the color of control is blue.

It's my long-awaited response song to black is the color of my Trulo's hair.

Yeah.

We have another case that sort of gets at this too, right, Jesse?

Here's something from Tony.

My friend Dylan and I were playing Spellcast the Get Along.

I played the land card Rainbow Veil.

Everyone agreed to pass Rainbow Veil along to the next player at the end of our turns, but Dylan didn't.

He...

played simic growth chamber.

This bounced Rainbow Veil back to me and set me back one mana for the rest of the game.

I was just trying to have fun and give everyone extra mana.

And this is obviously a typo that should be spello, spellos instead of mana, but you get the idea.

Rainbow Veil is a land card that says it adds one mana of any color to the mana pool and it passes to your opponent at the end of the turn.

Right.

And this is the same conflict as the last one is some people are trying to play a friendly game that is more about having a conversation, just hanging out, right?

And somebody else wants to win.

Now, John's going to like this a lot.

At some point, somebody wrote an article breaking down three types of players and contending that you will find people who are blends of these three types, but everybody is one of these if they're playing.

Spike

is one, Timmy is another.

Who's the other one?

Spike, Timmy, and I know.

I didn't know there were names.

Spikes, Timmies, and Johnny's, right?

Spikes are the ones who want to win.

That is the only reason they are playing the game is to win.

They may have fun doing it, or they may not.

They may be playing for money.

They may be competitive, but they're extremely competitive players, right?

And their only interest is in winning, right?

Any other interest they have is ancillary to this.

Timmies want to play cool cards.

They see a card that is extremely powerful and they just want the opportunity to get that card on the board, right?

And let it do its thing.

Right.

And

Johnny's, I never, in a great irony, I never remember what Johnny's are supposed to be doing.

Let me find the article.

Johnny is the creative gamer to whom magic is a form of self-expression.

Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style.

This is me, right?

I don't want to.

You literally are a Johnny.

Yes.

And the thing is, and that's why I lose more than most people, because I want, if I win, I want to do it on my own terms.

I want to have designed the deck myself instead of playing the meta, which means you find a deck that somebody else has built that's very efficient and you play those cards, right?

Spikes generally do this, and they might make their own slight adjustments but uh but they're not trying to build a deck that tells you anything about their their aesthetics pretty much every writer i think alive is going to be a johnny right it's going to want to say i'm going to make a deck that expresses who i am right that that tells you something about me right

but uh but your friends one of them is a spike and he wants to he wants to play a game that he can win.

So he figured out a way to get Rainbow Veil back in his hand and he's excited about this.

His friends are Timmies.

They're trying to have fun with playing cards, right?

They want to play a cool card.

They want to get their turn with Rainbow Veil.

Well, wait a minute.

I just want to clarify here because there are a lot of names being thrown around.

Yes.

Tony played Rainbow Veil.

Right.

But Dylan bounced it back to Tony with a Simic Growth Chamber card.

Right.

In order to deny the extra mana to the other players.

Right.

Who's the spike?

The spike.

Who's the guy who bounced it back?

Dylan.

Dylan played Simic Growth Chamber, right?

So Dylan's the Spike.

Dylan's the one who is trying to put other players at a disadvantage for his own advantage.

What's a Simic Growth Chamber?

When Simic Growth Chamber enters the battlefield, return a land you control to its owner's hand and tap it to add one tree in one water drop to your mana pool.

So that's one forest, one blue mana, and one green mana.

And that's a powerful card.

That's an uncommon land.

And it enters tapped, but when it does so, you get to put a land back in your hand.

So, what he just did is buy himself an extra land.

Because you need land to cast spells, that puts him at an advantage.

It's what's called card advantage.

When you have more cards than the other guy, you have an advantage.

The guy who's doing that, he's playing Spike.

His only concern is winning, right?

And putting other players at a disadvantage by denying them access to the mana that he has.

All right.

I'm just going to add two more track titles to the album.

Land Advantage.

This is a good good one.

And That's a Powerful Land.

It enters tapped.

So, well, you know,

I have a song called If a Powerful Animal Comes that I think

the name comes from the flavor text of some other games.

On all these cards, you'll sometimes see lines of prose, right?

And that's called Flavor Text.

And some other game had the line, If a Powerful Animal Comes.

And I went, well, I like that.

I'm taking that.

Boy, Jesse, did you hear John?

Did you hear John Darnell buzz marketing his album?

Wow.

There was the album Darken Hill here on Merge Records and tapes recorded at fame in muscle shoals uh with matt ross spang the great matt ross spang producer he's just gone it's like it's like it's like raw capitalism all of a sudden oh i did it's look i was born to pitch john

if i know one thing guys it's this in the feudal days of acacia finding the rainbow veil was often the goal of the night's quests So this is the flavor text of Rainbow Veil, which is interesting because it's a land, and most lands don't have flavor text, but strange lands that do extra things like this sometimes do.

Flavor text.

Yeah, the flavor text is written by the flavor unit, Queen Latifah's rap crit.

Thank you, Jesse.

They should do a co-branding.

They should do a secret lair with Queen Latifah.

That would be great.

So, John, before we go to the break, where we're going to hear about a fourth style of player called Luna, we have to make a ruling on Tony's case.

So, was it uncool for Dylan to bounce the rainbow veil back to Tony?

Or was it inbounds?

It's inbounds, Timmy.

Inbounds.

Sorry, Tony, You're a Timmy.

Dylan's a Spike.

That's the way it goes.

We got two Johnnies and one Jesse, but we got to take a break.

Yes, Jesse?

Let's take a quick break.

We'll have more fantastical card cases around the corner on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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welcome back to the judge john hodgman podcast we're clearing the docket with our pal john darneal of the mountain goats here's a case from joseph in st.

John's Newfoundland my partner Luna and I play Spellcast the Get Along.

Very popular game, a lot of parallels to Magic of the Gathering, but is definitely different.

Luna doesn't like to attack other players because it's too mean.

When Luna does target another player, they always apologize.

I believe Luna should be more aggressive.

It will help them win more and have more fun.

All right, John D, same deal, right?

But

is there a style of player who is just apologetic?

And is that a cool way to play?

Oh, yeah.

I actually,

there was a pre-release streaming thing where you play against people who, you know, sometimes they'll say, I'm so sorry.

I don't mean, I happen to love these players the most, the ones who apologize before they destroy you.

It's like, you know, but I think that's probably a psychosexual issue I have to work out.

But

that's, there's all, it's why this game is so good.

It's why I'm such a fan of it and such a, you know, sort of

an evangelist for it.

It's like, there are so many ways to play.

And it it really is more evidently a style of self-expression.

You're sharing something about yourself in the way you play, right?

I think that's why people don't like these burn decks.

It's like, oh, what you're telling me about you is you're not here to play a game with me.

You're just here to beat me, you know?

And

that's true in many other sports.

We experienced this

on baseball fields when we're kids and everything else like that.

But which kind of spell does Luna?

Luna doesn't like what?

Luna doesn't like to attack other players.

Oh, but you can't.

So luna unfortunately luna wants to play a style that i'm now delighted to tell you about uh it is the style people hate the most but those of us who play it can frame it in a way that makes it sound benign when it is in fact so much worse than direct damage what do you need to play magic john what's the one thing you must have that you cannot play magic without time

um

And cards.

Cards is correct.

Cards is correct.

Okay.

Time is also correct, but you have to have cards.

And you have to have a deck of cards, which.

Yeah, let's talk about cards for a second because I'm hearing a lot of terms like burn deck and overpowered deck and all eternals deck.

But people might not know either magic or spellcast.

Right.

In this game, you have cards to start.

You earn cards or capture cards.

You build a deck that has moves in it that only you can do.

And you carry that deck.

You want to take other people's cards.

That was in the first iteration of the game.

You actually were playing to win the cards.

Oh, okay.

But you don't do that anymore.

You bring your own cards.

This would take a long time to explain.

There's another version called Draft, where you're all opening up packs and building a deck on the fly, basically.

You pass the cards around in a circle.

You take one and pass the rest of the pack along.

And in this way, over the course of three packs, you build a deck.

Famously, that's what my friend Matthew from the Flea Market likes to play.

Yeah, no, because draft is the purest form of magic because you can't bring anything but your skills to it, right?

The cards you're going to get are a matter of chance and your good choices, right?

And so, uh, but I've, I mean, if you don't know what you're doing, like I can still tell you what card I passed to the left.

And this woman looked at me and said, Are you sure?

I said, Yeah, yeah, no, it doesn't fit with my deck.

Okay.

And then when I played her 10 minutes later, she's completely rolled over me because I had passed a card called Dream Trawler that you should absolutely interrupt whatever you were trying to build to take the dream trawler because it will kill the opponent dead.

And so take the dream trawler.

Write that down, John.

Yeah, I'm writing it down.

If you should pull a dream trawler, do not pass it to the right or to the left.

But the style of play I was going to tell you about is called Mill.

And this will take a minute, but I think you'll be happy with it.

Put a minute on the clock.

So, oh, I meant a minute metaphorically, John.

As you too well know.

This is spellcast.

So in Mill, I'm making you throw your cards away into the graveyard.

right that's that's what you're when you discard a card or when a creature dies it goes to the graveyard unless it goes into exile.

I'm not going to go into that.

But you're, the first thing you have to do every turn you take is draw a card.

If you can't draw a card because there are no cards in your library, then you lose.

Right.

Then it doesn't matter what your life total is.

Your life total can be 30,000 and you still lose to me personally because I have milled your deck.

I have put all your cards in the graveyard using my mage craft.

Right.

And

sure.

And so people hate playing against Mill because what Mill does is not only prevent you from playing your spells, it just says, no, you don't get to have any cards to play.

There's only one style of play that I think is hated, maybe even more, and it's harder to do.

It's called land destruction, where I just destroy your lands.

That's really hard to do land destruction.

Mill's comparatively easy.

And the first time my son, Moses, wanted to play, he was about four and he saw me building decks and really wanted, and I handed him one, and I took one, and we started to play.

And I realized that I had a Mill deck.

Explaining to your four-year-old that he has to continually keep putting his cards in the graveyard is one of the more unpleasant Aaron's fatherhood I've ever heard.

So, okay, well, buddy, this says that you have to take the top three cards of your library and put them in the grave.

And the look on his face was like he understood that he wasn't going to be getting those cards back.

And the question on his face was, why?

Why do I have to do that?

You are spiking your own son.

Well, no, this isn't spying.

It's milling is what it is.

It's playing.

And spikes don't generally play mill because mill is beatable in a lot of ways.

If you're playing against a Mill deck,

there's a lot of things you can do.

And one of them is if you're playing a bunch of cards that you can get back from your graveyard, then you don't care about your graveyard.

You can just get them back.

But

most decks can't do that.

And there's a great card called Cut Your Losses that says target player mills half their library, right?

And it has a thing called casualty, which says if I sacrifice a creature whose power is two or greater, I get to do that twice.

So I mill half your library and then I mill the other half all in one move.

I will never get enough of playing Cut Your Losses.

It's my favorite thing.

Wow.

Wow.

So, but it's the deck that determines that you play mill because you've got a bunch of mill cards and that's what you have to play.

Well,

so you usually wouldn't play mill in draft.

You build your own decks, right?

You build them from the cards that you have or buy or on arena that you have come into possession of.

And then you choose what colors you're going to build your decks around and what style you're going to play.

Right.

So with regard to Luna, the style of Luna's play is to be incredibly apologetic.

Yeah.

And also I had a note here from Luna's partner that they'll roll a randomizing die when attacking in order to not take responsibility for the damage they're doing or something.

You know, I said about something else.

This sounds like a very, I understand, like, because I don't like, like I say, I don't love.

damaging people face to face.

You go, here you go.

Sorry, I'm a bitch.

But it's not always damage to the face.

Sometimes it's damage to a rat.

Yeah, to the creatures.

But the goal of that is to eventually get the creatures out of the way way so that I can put damage on you.

Right.

All right.

But

I mean, that's, I have the same conflict when I'm playing any competitive game.

I have the same conflict,

you know, betting on horses.

You bet on one horse.

Well, you basically said to the other horse, I don't think you're as good or as fast as this other horse.

Yeah, but you don't have to go over to the horse and actually say it, John.

I've told you that at Saratoga many times.

Yeah, but the horse.

The horses don't speak English.

You don't have to go up to them and say you don't believe it.

They're powerful psychic beings, horses, and they know.

They know.

They can see you.

well then just say it from the stance you know we don't have to trudge through the mud to find i bet against you i bet again don't bother

so what is your advice then for luna do you think that joseph's right that luna should play more aggressively no luna should play mill and luna should uh play in a play style that takes those cards away from their opponents or Luna should play

white enchantments and

render all the other creatures inert so that they can't do any damage.

Luna should perhaps play a card called Overwhelming Splendor that reduces all of the opponents.

I know.

You feel me, right?

John, write that one down.

Luna should play Overwhelming Splendor, which will make all of their opponent's creatures, no matter what they were once, will now all be 1-1 creatures that lose all their other abilities.

And a 1-1 can only deal one damage, which is not much damage.

So

yeah, there are a number of strategies available to Luna.

to prevent this damage from occurring,

but you can't have a rule that says you don't get to deal damage.

There you go, Luna.

John D has just dealt you overwhelming splendor.

Here's some more.

Here's some more.

Wait, hold on, Judge Hodgman.

I think you've been writing these down to give a new Mountain Ghosts album to JD, but I think by the time we're done, I think we'll be able to write and record the Mountain Goats album.

We'll have enough material that.

Jesse, I know you as a big hip-hop enthusiast, and I think this is your chance.

You may know that Post Malone bought the most expensive magic card ever to exist.

So what does that have to do with hip-hop?

Doesn't Post Malone make hip-hop?

Yeah.

That was my joke.

Sorry.

You guys are really looking for beef, aren't you?

Hey, I don't play mill.

Yeah, I'm a real spike.

I will mill Post Malone's one ring card.

I will mill it.

This isn't.

Post Malone bought the most expensive deck of the most expensive single card.

John, you know, I know the name of a magic card.

Yeah, what is it?

I have magic cards when magic cards were new.

I would estimate the timeframe to be 1993 and 1994.

You should send these cards to me right away.

First-class air with insurance, and I will take good care of them.

A good card is Sarah Angel.

Sarah Angel is a good card.

It gets reprinted a lot.

It's a strong and good card, yeah.

Yeah.

Don't you agree, Hodgman?

Sarah Angel is a good card?

Sarah Angel is an incredible card.

Love John assuming the mental authority.

Sarah Angel's a great card.

Wouldn't you agree, John?

No, it's just a good card.

It's a good card.

Sorry, my mistake.

Good card is what I meant to say.

You're suggesting that Luna should play Mill.

We know that Luna is a little apologetic by nature.

Should Luna play Bold Mill or Meek Mill?

I don't.

I'm not familiar with Mr.

Mill's work to say.

Style of play should be bold mill or meek.

That's your right, Mr.

Mill.

The rapper, Philadelphia rapper, Meek Mill.

Yes.

Meek Mill.

Philly, you know, Philly falls falls out of the conversation when people talk about rap, but Philly is a big town for rap that people should talk about more.

You were going to say Post Malone bought the most expensive card.

Why don't you restate that just so that we have it clearly?

Post Malone bought the most expensive magic card ever to exist, which is the one ring, as in one ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them in the recent

co-branding with

Lord of the Rings.

Not co-branding, but the...

One ring to bring them all and in the darkness, bind them, right, John?

In the darkness, bind them.

That's correct.

As memorably sampled on a summoning album, album, I think, on Stronghold, but I could be wrong.

Just as Post Malone bound hip-hop, pop RB, and looking like you smell bad.

Well, I think Post's success is such that if he wants to look that way, he gets to look that way.

That's impressive.

He's apparently a very, very, very good player.

My friend Jack Antonoff also plays Magic, and I think he's a very good player.

There's a lot of, you know, it's something you can do with your friends on a tour bus, right?

If you're if you haven't yet alienated them so that they don't want to play games with you anymore, you can play magic with them.

What did Post pay for the one ring card?

I would just say millions and millions, I think.

Here's the thing: the reason it's the most expensive card, you're going to like this.

How many of them do you suppose were printed?

I got to go with one.

One is correct.

It's the one ring.

2.6 million.

All so that he could go up on top of a volcano and throw it in there.

I mean, I think we're all in agreement.

He should absolutely do this

and then charge pay-per-view, right, and make us 2.6 back.

I mean, to me, this would be

truly magical business sense.

Or spellcasty, if you will.

Some quick snap judgments on some card disputes.

Should Vince and Reggie use proxy cards in their unsanctioned play?

I hope you know what those words mean.

Go ahead.

So, yeah, so proxy cards, the thing is, there is, I don't think there is a good case against proxy cards.

If you...

These are counterfeit cards.

Well, that you made yourself, right?

That if I show you a card trick that involves me ripping up the ace of spades, right?

You know some of these tricks, right?

Or I eat it or whatever.

Yeah.

But then later that night, we want to play California lowball.

We will just put together an ace of spades from paper, right?

And we'll use that.

That'll be the ace, right?

Well, I'm going to insist that you regurgitate it.

Why did you even eat it?

Let's play the game.

So let me understand.

If we all agreed to use proxy cards and it was okay, then I could make a Sarah Angel of my own right now using a piece of paper and a pen.

Absolutely.

You don't even have to write the rules text on it if we know what a Sarah Angel does.

Here's the arguments for and against proxies.

Argument for proxies is some of these cards are expensive and hard to find.

I have to order them by mail order.

I may not have enough money to buy, you know, I don't have enough money to buy a Mox Amber or whatever, you know.

But I want to play a deck that has it.

I know this deck that I can design that will be cool to play, but I can't afford.

Yeah, that's Johnny style.

You want to play some cool cards and you want to do it with style.

Well, but not only that,

there's a justice angle to it.

If I want to play soccer with you, all I need is a ball.

And that is why people will often argue soccer is the best game.

And I find that argument persuasive, right?

Any barrier to entry, it is the beautiful game because any barrier to entry means less fun for more people, right?

Whereas if you're playing no proxies, it means that the power of my deck is limited eventually by money or luck.

If I lucked into some cards playing playing draft, that's great.

So the argument for proxies is that it's kind of classist for you to say, oh, I have more money than you, so my deck is better than yours.

But the argument against proxies is like, look, that limitation, as with many limitations, is an invitation to creativity, right?

This is the Catholic position.

Like when I take a lot of stuff away from you, right?

I say you can't do this and you can't do that.

You find a way to be creative within those rules and find creative roots to things that you wouldn't have found without the limitations.

The people who believe in proxies are just hollering bullshit right now.

They say, No, I don't care about any of that.

If I don't have the money to play the same deck, you have an actual advantage over me.

It really is the correct argument, but the aesthetic argument appeals to me as an aesthete, right?

It's like, I like limitation, but then you should be playing limited if you like that.

You should be playing draft, right?

So you find Vince wants to use proxies because he wants it to be about fun, not money.

You find in Vince's favor in this case?

I find in Vince's favor that proxies for kitchen table for unsanctioned play, there's no good argument against proxies.

Our Reddit user on maximumfund.reddit.com, 40% dolomite, asks,

was it correct for me to stop using my mythic rare artifact card because it overpowered my deck and it bummed out my fellow players?

A kitchen table,

as you might imagine, you and I would both be sympathetic to who wants to play a card that just takes away other people's fun?

In this case, 40% Dolomite was using their Mythic Rare Artifact card to turn their opponent's creatures against them by transforming those creatures into green and black elves.

Good use of that card?

Yes or no?

Good use of that card if you want to win.

I'm not sure which card does that, but that's very like Overwhelming Splendor that just like takes all your creatures since now they're a bunch of one-ones and they can't do anything else.

It's not an indestructible enchantment, so you can respond to that enchantment.

And in real life, you can also respond to my enchantments.

But the thing is, this is a key question.

It's like, why are we playing?

Are we playing to have fun with each other?

And do we want the game to last so that we can hang out together, have some hot chocolate, talk about movies in between turns?

There is a style of play called Commander, which is played by three or more people, right?

It's the most popular and most rising form right now.

And in Commander, the cards can get very powerful and you can do a bunch of damage, but it's not even about that.

It's about having fun with three people because the conversations are better than the My Dinner with Andre format of one-on-one.

And

viewers, you can't, your listeners can't see that I got John to respond with by referencing my dream with Andre, and

I'll be glowing from that all day.

I'm responding.

I'm just saying, Jesse Thorne, you're out there in Hollywood, right?

I am.

As of this recording,

the WGA strike is over.

We've ratified the new contract.

As of this recording, the SAG after strike is preliminarily over.

We're waiting to ratify the new contract.

Hollywood is open for business.

Can you, Jesse Thorne, get out there in Hollywood and pitch someone to make a movie of the three of us playing a commander game of Spellcast the get-along

as a feature film.

I've got Brockheimer's number.

Great.

We can call it Apologize Before You Destroy Me,

right?

That'll stop someone in their tracks on Netflix or whatever streamer you use.

They will absolutely use that on web films, actually.

Netflix declined to sponsor me, so I'm calling the web films now.

We can get a freevie out of it in any case.

I think we have one more quick one before we go to break, Jesse.

Yeah, I'm not going to pitch that to Brockheimer.

I'm going to pitch that to the Duplos brothers.

Here's one from Derek in Tacoma.

I'm an actual attorney acting on behalf of my 13-year-old son, Wyatt.

He brings suit against his older brother, Rowan.

Wow.

Devs.

Wyatt's attorney is OP.

It's overpowered.

Yes, he is.

Nerf Derek.

Okay.

Wyatt has a spellcast, the get-along deck, that is dinosaur tribal-themed.

Oh, that's hard.

That's a hard deck to beat.

He always beats Rowan with this deck.

Now Rowan says he hates all dinosaurs and will not even watch dinosaur movies.

Oh, no.

Please rule that dinosaurs are cool and that Rowan shouldn't drag dinosaurs just because he can't beat Wyatt.

So I believe that Judge Hodgman will agree with me that it has been preemptively ruled by the judge who precedes us all that dinosaurs are cool, right?

Dinosaurs are cool in eternity, and they were cool before us, and they'll be cool when we're long gone.

Wait, man, are you talking, are you talking about the judge who precedes us?

You're talking about God or whatever, as we refer to it as you're on the podcast,

God or Almighty or whatever, who loved the dinosaurs so much that he slash they, slash she slash them brought the dinosaurs home with the big old meteor just to hang out with them?

Are you really wanting to open up the question of the intentionality of God's behavior and whether or not God set a universe in motion that gave us actual free will and chose then to absent himself from making such choices with me, who will talk about this all day.

I don't know.

I don't know, John.

Is this movie called Apologize Before You Destroy Me or not?

Yes, it is.

It's very much called that.

I think we can all agree, no matter how we feel about metaphysics, the tyrannosaurs are cool, brachiosaurs are cool, parasauralophosaurs are cool, all dinosaurs are cool, right?

Yes, very true.

But playing tribal dinosaurs

is a way of playing Spike.

It's a way of saying, look, I'm just going to run that's mono-green.

It means you're only playing green cards.

You're not playing anything else.

There are some red dinosaurs, but mainly they're green.

And what they're going to do is great big creatures that will stomp on you.

In fact, one of the

terms for dinosaur decks, you call them stompy, right?

Because they will stomp on you.

And it's not fun to get stomped on.

And you have to, and it happens very fast.

And so Wyatt's brother is complaining, I don't like to play against this deck.

And this is, you know, it's the same as with Monopoly and stuff.

It's like the little brother is saying, can we play a deck that's more fun to play against than you just flinging damage at me all day?

But so yeah, I think his brother should build a different deck and let his brother also have fun.

So you're saying that Wyatt should get rid of some, should build a non-dinosaur deck if he wants to have fun with his brother Rowan.

Otherwise, Rowan's going to stomp away from it.

Wyatt should, there's more than one deck to play.

Play a deck that his brother, I'm assuming his brother's a little younger.

No, in fact, Rowan is the older brother.

He's the older brother.

Rowan is getting stomped by Wyatt and Wyatt's dinosaur deck.

Oh, well, Rowan's just mad that his little brother's beating him.

Nothing to do with dinosaurs at all.

So, what's the resolution?

Well, the resolution, if he's the older brother,

I mean, then it's sort of incumbent on him to

build a deck that responds to the dinosaurs.

You know, and that's and that's what this song is called, is Response to the Dinosaurs.

Response to the dinosaurs.

Response to the dinosaurs.

It's all album.

What's some Johnny D style deck building advice you could give to Rowan to counter the dinosaurs?

So he should be actually be playing Fast Burn, the one you started talking about, flinging damage, damage spells, right?

If by the time, because dinosaurs, most of them are expensive to cast.

You have to play what's called Ramp, which is

being able to make your land work harder for you to get these big creatures that cost a lot to play out.

You're not getting a big dinosaur out on turn two or turn three.

You don't, you can't, you don't have the land to play for it because you know they usually play one land per turn.

If I'm playing red, I play one mountain.

I play shock to two damage to your face right away before you've even conceived of summoning a dinosaur.

Okay.

And two turns later, I'm going to play a turn that lets me duplicate my shock 2-2 again, six damage to your face.

By the time you get a dinosaur out, you're at two life worrying about what to do with that life, which I'm then going to take away by casting Demon Bolt on whatever 4-4 you brought out.

Write it down, Rowan.

Write it down and remember it.

Remember.

Play Burn.

But I don't like playing Burn.

The thing Burn is boring to me.

It's like it wins games very fast

and it's as alienating as big as big dinosaurs.

Again, because the other thing that he can do is play blue.

If you cast a 12-12 dinosaur

and I just cast Essence Scatter, it costs me two blue, one blue and one any color, right?

Well, Well, now that dinosaur goes to the graveyard.

I never see him again.

He's with the rest of the dinosaurs, right?

Play control.

Whether it's burn or blue, Rowan, there's a path for you to beat those dinosaurs.

Remember, dinosaurs are big and stompy.

But the little, small, wily mammals were the ones who are still here.

You can do it, Rowan.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, more card game disputes.

Hi, I'm Amber Nash, the voice of Pampoovi on the groundbreaking FX animated comedy Archer.

Remember Archer?

I sure don't.

That's why I started rephrasing an Archer Rewatch podcast on maximumfun.org.

Join me and a bevy of special guests as we discuss every episode of Archer starting from the very beginning.

Archer executive producer Casey Willis and editor Christian Danley will provide insight and fun and help me remember everything I've forgotten about Archer, which is a lot.

So join me on rephrasing an Archer Rewatch podcast on maximumfun.org because I can't wait to watch Archer again for the very first time.

The wizards answer eight by eight.

The Cornclave's call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell.

They number 64

until

a conflagration

63

and 62 they soon shall be, as one by one the wizards die, till one remains to reign on high.

Join us for Taz Royale, an oops all-wizards battle royale season of the adventure zone every other Thursday on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Judge Hodgman, we're taking a quick break from the docket, and I have my eye right around the corner on our appearance at SF Sketchfest on January 27th.

It's our favorite show of the year, every year.

I love to be part of Sketchfest.

I've been part of Sketchfest since I think the third Sketchfest ever, which is now like 20 years ago.

Yeah.

I mean, San Francisco is your home.

So this is a literal homecoming for you.

But absolutely for me, a native of the southeastern region of Canada known as New England, going to Sketchfest to perform Judge John Hodgman.

That's my home too.

Like, I cannot wait to get back.

And this year, we're going to a brand new home, the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts.

This remarkable structure.

It's, I guarantee, be the only show that we do in a venue that has a lagoon.

And we would love to see all of you there.

It's at 4 p.m.

in the afternoon, and there's nothing else going on on a Saturday.

So come on out and fill the place at bit.ly slash jjho sf24.

That's all capital letters, or just go to sfsketchfest.com.

You'll find us there and you're going to find a lot of other cool things that you want to be a part of as well.

Hey, we need your cases for this show.

So if you've got a dispute that you'd like us to consider to adjudicate live on stage that afternoon, as always, go to maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho and let us know that you'll be in town.

I said it before.

I've said it again.

If you have a problem with my mom, Judy, now is your chance to air that beef because

she'll be there.

Dollars to doughnuts.

Judy's going to be there.

Yeah.

But I do want to forewarn you, she will defend herself.

Yeah.

And by the way, you can't pay with donuts.

Mama, don't take no mess,

as they say.

Jesse, what's going on in the put this on shop right now?

Well, the holiday season has passed, and I want to give our listeners a chance to do some very classic after-Christmas shopping.

So if you use the code 2024 Justice, 2024 Justice during the month of January, you get 25% off anything in the entire store.

25% off?

That's a quarter off.

Even the like fine jewelry.

In fact,

I'm concerned I might accidentally

sell gold for less than its melt value.

But, you know, that's life in the big city.

I already made the code 2024 justice at putthisonshop.com.

There is something for everyone there.

And

we had such a great holiday season.

Thank you to to all the Judge John Hodgman listeners who shopped in our shop in person and online.

So go to putthisonshop.com and use that code 2024 justice.

And you can have a great discount on anything during the month of January.

Let's get back to that docket.

Let's get back to that docket.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket.

Our guest is the great John Darnell of the Mountain Goats.

Here's one from David in Warwick, Rhode Island.

I haven't played Spellcast the Get-Along since 2002.

All of the smart guys got out of Spellcast the Get-Along in 1993, 1994, is my understanding.

They were playing it at Nueva Middle School in Hillsborough, California, but then when they went to School of the Arts in San Francisco, they became artsy.

Right.

During the last game, I played a card called Double Deal against my brother Derek.

According to the text on the card, Double Deal deals three damage to the Derek now and an additional three damage at the beginning of the next game, Derek.

Oh, that's an old card.

It's a very specific card, just for Derek.

They don't print cards like that anymore.

After this, Derek has refused to play me again for 21 years.

Please order Derek to play spellcast the get-along with me and take the damage.

Five points adjusted for inflation.

I need to display my superiority.

It's important.

I'm going to put in the chat the art for Double deal in the chat there it is uh as you can see this is splendid right this is a beautiful old piece of magic art they don't look like that anymore they're now very professional but that looks like it was made by you know by a person who did it in his notebook right yeah it looks like it was drawn drawn by a by a withdrawn seventh grader yeah by it by you know by somebody who plays dnd right um

and it's and obviously the card is not just targeting derek it's literally double deal deals three damage to your opponent now and deals an additional three damage to that opponent at the beginning of the next game that you play.

With the player.

That's right.

But it's still one player.

It's at one guy.

So the other guy is going to start his next game at minus at three.

He's going to have a handicap in the next game.

I mean, the thing is, in terms of formats, if you're playing this card now,

There are so many other cards that will make Double Deal a non-issue.

He should play what's called a life gain deck.

It's remarkable that we've talked about magic this long without me telling you how much I hate life gain, right?

I live to oppose life gain decks.

An extremely weird motivational video.

I will do anything to make a person who plays a life gain deck wish they hadn't, right?

To make them feel bad about it.

But a life gain deck against double deal,

go ahead, damage me for three.

I'll be up by six by turn two anyway, right?

Because it's very possible to just keep gaining life and gaining life and punishing your opponent with the life that you gain.

If you run a card, John Hodgman named Vito, that's V-I-T-O, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, right?

That's Jesse's nickname.

That was my birth name, yeah.

Birth name.

So Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, has a static condition that means this is true as long as he's on the board.

Whenever you, the person playing Vito, gain life, your target opponent loses that much life.

I just can't stand this.

This just drives drives me out of my mind.

It's like Gore Vidal used to say: it's not enough that your enemies fail.

You must punish your friends with the life you gain.

This is exactly what Vito is.

And it's why I dislike Vito.

It's like, you go ahead and gain life, but don't make me pay for it.

And so, I mean, they should just play it and you should take the damage.

And then

is there any deck that he can build that would

not merely with, you know, mitigate the damage that he's starting with, but also get back at David the Brother for instigating it in the first place.

So, yes, there's actually, I would strongly recommend, and I can't think of the names of the cards, but because I can't think of what the condition is, but swamps produce black mana, right?

Jesse, just so you know, swamps produce black mana.

Thanks for that, John.

I appreciate your expertise.

Jesse looks stoic about this.

So,

a lot of these black decks let you pay life to do stuff, right?

Pay to life to do something.

And some of them reward you for having lower life.

You'll have a creature that gets bigger as your life gets lower.

You'll have something you can only do if you have six or less life, right?

And these are, they are tricky decks to play, right?

Because obviously, if you get down to zero, you're done.

Unless...

There is a card that also I know you're going to like.

Cloudsteel Kirin is an artifact creature that you can reconfigure for five and attach to another creature.

And once that has happened, you can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game.

Wow.

And there's another card called Platinum Angel.

It has the same static condition.

You can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game.

What's the name of that card again?

Platinum Angel is the easiest one of these.

But the thing about Platinum Angel is...

It's destroyable, right?

If I destroy Platinum Angel, then you can lose the game, right?

Oh, okay.

But as long as it's in play, you're invincible.

Yeah, there's a couple more.

There's a, well, so Lich's Mastery is a legendary enchantment, and it's hex-proof.

That means you can't target it, right?

It just sits there.

You can't do anything to it.

And it states that you can't lose the game.

Whenever you gain life, you draw that many cards.

Whenever you lose life, for each life you lost, exile a permanent you control or a card from your hand or a graveyard.

When Lich's Mastery leaves the battlefield, you lose the game, right?

Really complicated card, and usually you're going to to lose when you play it.

Real easy game to play, very accessible.

Jump right in.

As simple as that.

It's very funny because there's a format called jump in that's supposed to be an easy format to play.

You just jump right in and play it.

This card will not be found in that format.

But I think, yeah, I think you should play.

I think the ruling is go ahead and play a game of magic and beat your brother and make him regret that he played double deal.

I couldn't agree with you more.

Absolutely, Derek.

Get in there, get Lich's mastery, get a Platinum Angel, do what you need to do, and enjoy what John Darnell calls your reward for lower life.

That's right.

Reward for lower life.

That's my autobiography.

But you must face David again.

Go fulfill your destiny, Derek and David.

Get revenge.

So there's one other little case.

This is not related to spellcast, the get-along, or magic of the gathering.

But we were just on the road, the Van Freaks Road Show.

You're on tour right now.

John D, correct?

You can go to, what is it, mountain-goats.com.

That's right.

Where you can find all the places that John is playing solo and with the mountain goats.

You can see John Darneal in many forms.

Choose the form.

We got the duo tour in January that starts in Charlotte.

That'll be a lot with Craig Finn and Bully opening.

It's a whole package.

It's going to be really fun.

Get the over there.

But while we were on our tour, one listener came to the tour, met us afterward, and mentioned this interesting conundrum.

Jesse Thorne, you want to read us about it?

Chris was his name from Nashua, New Hampshire.

I am a middle school music teacher, and I teach my students birdsong is not music.

Am I wrong?

Yes.

Exactly.

Immediately, yes.

There's absolutely no, no, oh my God.

I mean, go talk to Olivier Messian, the French composer, who's absolutely canonical at this point, though he was scandalous when he was new.

What a coincidence.

I was going to do that after the show.

He and I were going to have lunch.

I'm afraid he sings with the angels now.

Oh,

excuse me.

I have to really respect my own transition there.

That was good.

But yeah, Messian wrote an entire

great piano piece about bird song.

I mean, yeah, but let me ask you a question.

Human or bird was this composer?

Human or bird?

Human.

He was human.

JD, him writing a piano concerto based on or inspired by bird song or even designed to reflect bird song is something that I can't imagine Chris would argue is not music.

I think what Chris is suggesting, and this is informed by our brief conversation with him at our live show, is that if it doesn't involve human intentionality, it isn't music, it's just sound.

No, I don't agree with that at all.

But I think, I mean, this is a question that what you want to do when you're having this discussion with your students is that's an opportunity to read John Cage and to really engage with Cage thought, right?

John Cage,

because of his best-known piece, 433,

sort of ends there for a lot of people.

But he's one of the truly great thinkers of the 20th century about music because he asked a lot of questions about what music is, what it means, about what we exclude when we insist that it's only organized sound, and when we insist that it's about human intention.

A lot of John Cage's stuff is throwing the I-Ching to get...

results and it's music.

It's still music.

Here's the thing.

Everything is music.

Sylvia Plath has a poem called Morning Morning Song.

Do you guys know this one?

No.

I had that card briefly, but I had to sell it.

So if, and I know this is maybe insufferable, I would like to read a poem on the Judge John Hodgman podcast that I think answers this question definitively.

It's about the birth of a child.

And it's Morning Song by Sylvia Plath.

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles.

And your bald cry took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival, new statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness shadows our safety.

We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow effacement at the wind's hand.

All night, your moth breath flickers among the flat pink roses.

I wake to listen.

A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral, in my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.

The window square whitens and swallows its dull stars.

And now

you try

your handful of notes.

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

So my ruling is that if Sylvia Plath says that that's a handful of notes, then that's music.

And that's, and I defer to the poets on all judgments.

Well, I agree.

I agree with you that I think that, you know, and even Chris mentioned cage when we we were talking about it, but go and read Plath, go and read your cage, Chris, and rethink it because we do have to decenter humans in our experience because that bird song is real song.

I'm a little confused, though, John, because I was reading along

on my Sylvia Plath card.

Yes.

And maybe you have a different edition or something.

But what was the last line of your version?

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Yeah, because I have that part.

And then it says, take the dream trawler.

I really would love for Sylvia Plath to just mill me ruthlessly.

That would be my dream.

John Arnold, let's just go over it again.

Mountain-goats.com or just Google Mountain Goats and you'll get there.

Also, I'm on Blue Sky and I'm still occasionally going to the bird app.

You know, it's what it is.

Yeah, we won't talk about it.

But what on Blue Sky,

what is your moniker?

It's the same.

It's a Mountain underscore goats, which I did on purpose.

So it would be the

same thing.

Mountain underscore goats on the socials, mountain-goats.com on the URL.

The new album is Jenny from Thebes, and it's absolutely brilliant, available wherever you get your music now.

And you should absolutely go check out John Darneal on tour.

Just Google John Darneal tour or Mountain Goats Tour or whatever it is.

I've been to several of your shows.

There's nothing more life-affirming than being there and John Dee catching your eye as he sings his songs.

Which I will now, you know, I got contact lenses today.

I've been performing without glasses.

It's given me some freedom.

But when I last tried contacts, I couldn't stand them.

And I thought, but if it's only for a couple hours a night, that will be like the best of both worlds.

So wish me luck on that.

Big if true.

Devs, JD's eyeballs are OP.

Nerf JD's eyeballs.

The docket is clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

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