If i kill a saddling creature in response to saddle, why is the mount still saddled? This flavor mismatch has led to misplays :(

Sometimes making a mechanic 100% match reality leads to worse gameplay. Also, sometimes doing so adds a lot of words, and it’s not worth it.

Can I ask you to pass on feedback to the testing teams for limited to please stop giving Green such pushed removal? Green removal is almost always "Bite" rather than "Fight" effects now, often pumps the creature (sometimes permanently), usually for three and sometimes even two mana, and often at instant speed.

The trade-off for this used to be that Green's removal was vulnerable and conditional because it was reliant on creatures, but Green's creatures are so pushed these days and limited is so creature focused that cards like Throw from the Saddle and Clear Shot play just like Doom Blade and Murder, comparable or better to what Black (the "removal colour") gets.

I worry that it distorts the roles the colour pie plays in limited magic. It certainly detracts from my enjoyment of it.

Green historically has been the weakest limited color. We’re trying to help fix that.

Could a vehicle have a Saddle ability on top of a Crew ability?

I’m not sure what the point of doing that would be.

Will saddle be deciduous like how vehicles are?

It has that potential.

Are you concerned at all that limiting Saddle in OTJ to sorcery speed will reduce future design space? It seems the designs in OTJ are largely limited to things that are good on your turn, so for 90% of use cases they'll be activated at sorcery speed anyway. But now in the future if you wanted to make defensive Mounts for whatever reason, you'd have to come up with a new mechanic or change the rules.

Mounts are already creatures which can block. The sorcery speed was done very consciously.

So OTJ feels like a very top down western plane to me, and the Villain aspect barely pings in my radar. This isn't a complaint, the western setting is much more interesting to me than the Villain theme. But aside from having a bunch of named characters, most of whomever have no lore to tell us if they are Villains or not, what aspects of the set are you guys seeing as Villainous? Mechanics wise, spree, deserts, outlaws, mercenary tokens, and mounts all feel westerm inspired, where plot is certainly named like its a villain mechanic, but doesn't particularly feel villanous. Leaving crime as the only thing that feels like a Villain mechanic, and even then, most westerns have the heros doing a crime. I think it might a case where the setting and theme weirdly had too much overlap.

Committing crimes, the outlaw batch, plotting, spree, the mercenary token - all villain themed. Only saddle/mount and “desert matters” is western themed (without a tie to villains).

I was interested to see that Saddle can only be activated at ‘Sorcery Speed’. If you could go back, would you have made Crew function the same way? I would have expected the two to work similarly. I guess with how the mounts are functioning, being able to activate it at instant speed is kind of meaningless, except I suppose to Saddle in response to removal.

We need crew to function that way because we want Vehicles to be able to block. Saddled creatures can naturally do that, and the effects we want for saddle are more offensive in nature.

Another rules question for you. Unlike Crew, Saddle's reminder text doesn't specify that the creatures you tap must be untapped. Does this mean that you can pay a saddle cost with creatures that are already tapped?

No, you cannot. You can’t pay a cost with something you don’t have.

We've seen Mount is a new creature type to go alongside Saddle as an ability. My first thought on seeing this is to wonder why it's not the same problem as the Kindred card type? From now on, any creature that theoretically could be saddled/mounted, the question will be "why isn't this a Mount?"

Mount will be tied one-to-one with saddle. It’s not a flavor decision, solely a mechanical one.

Hello Mark,Dominaria remastered made me go through memory lane, to the time I started playing magic as a teen (really looking forward to it!).Thinking back of Invasion, I remember a character referenced on multiple cards but that never received a card herself: The Urborg Witch (card references: Addle, exotic curse, dredge, undermine, smoldering tar).Can I request a card for her? :)Thank you

You may.