Mark, it's my birthday this week, and I'd like to thank y'all for timing Bloomburrow prerelease to nearly occur on my personal day of celebration, a set I have been very jazzed about since it was announced. I really love the possum druid in particular.

For my question though, where is Xerex on the Rabiah scale? I really enjoyed the glimpses of surreal Escher geometries and the alien beings that live there.

Xerex is a 9. “World that’s hard to comprehend” is not an ideal premier setting.

Good day, Mark! Just adding yet another lengthy Duskmourn opinion to the stack.Personally, I don’t mind the more modern vibes as long as they’re something used very sparingly across sets as a whole. As in, I’d probably start having problems if we saw another set with a “modern” setting within the next year or two (not counting UB, which I consider a whole separate thing), but getting one every once in a blue moon is a neat little curiosity if nothing else.I actually think the fact that Duskmourn is so horror-focused helps the modern-ness fit better. Like, since the whole vibe of the set is that it’s full of things that are bizarre and out-of-place, modern things like TVs create a fitting contrast with the fantasy characters and concepts. It truly does feel like an invasion from an “alien” world into the one we’re familiar with. Which is kind of perfect!However, there is one thing I’d like to voice a complaint about: the card Chainsaw. It’s not even the fact that it’s a chainsaw that bugs me, but that its name is just… Chainsaw. Even if the setting is more modern, I feel like there should be an underlying level of fantasticalness that never goes away. I think the razorkin from the PW guide are an excellent example of this; taking the Slasher Monster trope and twisting it a bit so it still feels fantastical. But the Chainsaw is just a chainsaw. It’s not even, like, “[Adjective] Chainsaw.” It feels mundane and unexciting. I felt similarly about the Clue weapons in MKM, for what it’s worth. I want every Magic card to feel like it’s something that could only come out of the Magic multiverse.Obviously, that’s just one card, but I’m a tad concerned there are going to be more cards like it revealed later on. It wouldn’t ruin the set or anything, but it would be disappointing to me, especially if I like the mechanics of the cards themselves.

Would an adjective make it feel more fantastical? We made a Chainsaw in original Innistrad and it turned into Trepanation Blade. I still refer to it as Chainsaw. I’m kind of excited to make a set that can have an actual chainsaw. I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts about the name Chainsaw.

Would the Xenomorph from Alien be pure Green?

It depends on how you view them. In one interpretation, they’re monogreen.

Hi Mark, isn’t it true that after all the buzz about hats in magic lately, WotC are going to take advantage and today are announcing Hat as a new creature type going forwards? I can’t wait until Nicholas Bolas finally returns from the meditation plane with a hat atop both of his horns and a third where his gem used to be! All hail the Hat-Dragon God!

Hats as a creature type starts in Bloomburrow. It was supposed to start in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, but the alien infestation took up a lot of our design time.

Hi Mark!Really excited for it, but will GDS4 be opened to people outside the US?Thanks!

It’s open to everyone, including space aliens. And dogs.

Why aren't the Transformers cards included in BRO also Aliens? Lack of space design wise, deliberate choice, or was the type Alien just not developed yet?

Aliens were introduced in Unfinity which wasn’t something most designers were aware of until the product came out.

I know the set’s a ways away but do you have any insight on how Volleyball is gonna handle the Alien subtype? It feels like a hard thing to manage, especially within MTG’s setting.

Ask back in a few years. : )

The Alien creature type seems overly broad and arbitrary: broad in that it can describe vastly different species and races, arbitrary in that an alien isn’t an alien at home. Why did you all choose to use it?

We needed a catch-all, as it would allow us down the road to mechanically care about the grouping.

Hi Mark! As a Vorthos I wanted to voice an opinion on the creature type "Alien". In brief I don't like it flavorfully because alieness is relative, especially in a setting that is composed by different worlds interacting with eachother. Mechanically I understand its role similar to Beast to group a lot of creatures whose species wouldn't get their own typeline, especially with sci-fi Universes Beyonds' products.
Creatures like "Davros" and "The face of Boe" that would be class-only without their species featured make sense as alien for a mechanical reason, but I think that cards like "Spelling Bee" or "Star Whale" work just fine as Insect and Whale and sticking the alien type on them just feels wrong.

Until we make a card that mechanically cares about something being an Alien. : )

Each set presented during the panel is really exciting ! Literally every set until Ziplining hype me, and I’m looking to Draft/Play each of them.And I wanted to say a special thanks for Volleyball (the Space Opera set): I started playing Magic in ~2004 with Mirrodin. The “alien, light Sci-Fi” aspect of the set brought me into the game, and I wanted a Magic’s own hard Sci-Fi Set since then, and now we will be able to play such a set !

Ziplining will be excited once we can tell you the theme. : )