I really don't understand WotC sometimes, you take away the draft booster, because there are too many booster product lines, but now introduce the new "Value Booster", even though smaller, non-draftable boosters have proven to be unsuccessful wither aftermath. I really don't understand that logic.

The Value Booster is for a very narrow type of store. Most players will never see it.

Given small expansions flopped, why did Aftermath ever seem likely to work out? "More of the same", even with more story, had always sold relatively poorly, no?

It was exploring the space of what happened if we didn’t have to care about limited play?

I understand that there are things you can point to that are visible consequences of the Phyrexian invasion like story content and the deaths of Eldraine’s king and queen, but doesn’t it say something that you need to point those out as counter arguments to begin with?The problem with threatening a Phyrexian planar threat is that the damage was implied to be irreversible. Compleation often involved grotesque surgical mutilation, so it doesn’t make sense that compleated characters could return to normal so easily and without any significant scarring. Phyrexian oil is supposed to be so dangerous that a single drop could eventually infect and corrupt an entire plane, so it seems impossible to eradicate. Even ignoring the resilience of the Phyrexians themselves, a large scale military invasion aided by the most powerful beings on each plane should have left those planes in a post-apocalyptic state, yet all of that seems to be off-screen or completely disregarded. We went underground for Ixalan, so we didn’t see the devastation. We went into the wilds for Eldraine, so we didn’t see the courts in shambles. Ravnica seems to be the same as ever, just with more detective hats. And the last set of the year that immediately followed the invasion takes place on a plane nobody even lived on during the invasion, so there were no consequences to show off.I think the real issue isn’t necessarily that there weren’t consequences, but that you guys chose deliberately not to show them on cards, outside of the desparked planeswalkers and a few cards in Aftermath. As it is, it’s difficult to believe that the Phyrexian threat that was built up over decades could be so easily repelled AND completely defeated at the height of their power, but I would argue that the sets directly following the invasion should have all had a blatantly dark, somber, post-apocalyptic theme. Instead, we got a bunch of light hearted costume party sets that seemed chosen specifically to NOT show how much damage was done. I get that you want to have a tone shift after a darker year, but it just feels like instead of getting closure, we all just got whiplash instead. It would have been better to show a struggling multiverse slowly learning to rebuild before diving into the next big arc.

There’s a big difference between did big things happen and do we need to focus on them? For the Vorthoses who read the stories, the Phyrexian War had huge consequences for many worlds. From a game standpoint, it changed how we used a whole card type and allowed us to make sets we couldn’t make before. The impact of the events of March of the Machine on flavor and mechanics was major.The reason we didn’t focus on the outcomes on the cards and have a year of dreary sets is we strongly believed the majority of the players didn’t want that.

Has it become clear yet if cramming the Aftermath set into a bonus sheet was a success or not? Seeing how bomb heavy the prerelease was made me dislike that solution to your self-made problem quite a lot. Stoneforge Mystic and Oko are incredibly warping in limited.

You’re conflating the bonus sheet of reprints with the Big Score collection of new card designs ported over from the Aftermath-ish product.

If polling showed that staying on a plane for longer than one set had players happier with having more cards exploring the mechanics, happier with the depth and pacing of the story, were more likely to form deeper relationships to named characters, etc., but sales were still the same block structure expectation of a second set making less money, would this at all move the needle towards having more consecutive plane products? (I am including the possibility of smaller products like Aftermath, but obviously not the way Aftermath was done since it seems that shipped has sailed for the time being). I ask because I don't know what that polling data is, but I do know those second sets don't sell as well, and I (naïvely?) think that money matters but isn't the sole and exclusive metric of a good set.

Sales (almost) always goes hand in hand with market research about happiness. If players are happy about something, they spend more. It’s not as if staying on a world is positive on every metric, but sales.

Was an Aftermath style set ever planned for Murders at Karlov Manor in development? It seemed like the perfect opportunity to set up the mystery in the main set and then solve it in the Aftermath.

It was discussed, but never executed on.

Out of curiosity, was any work done on a 2025 epilogue/aftermath set?

Very little if any.

If The Big Score does well could we see more "bonus sheets" with new cards? I really like the card designs in BIG and Aftermath and would love to keep getting cards designed that way, despite Aftermath doing poorly and BIG just being a quick fix.

It’s something we can consider.

How does Aftermath compare to Mercadian Masques?

I assume you’re asking about player dislike of the set. Mercadian Masques was strongly disliked. Aftermath was hated. Significantly lower scores than Mercadian Masques.

Why is Jace Reawakened collector number 271 ??? He isn't part of the U cards?

Jace Reawakened was originally part of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Aftermath set. That product was killed pretty late, so much so, that we couldn’t change the collector numbers when we moved Jace into the main set. I think the rest of the cards from Aftermath (at least the ones we kept) are part of the Big Score.