Do you think you would have enough material for a Drive to Work on "hand matters" themes like amplify, Saviours of Kamigawa, and reveal from hand effects? It feels like a subject similar to four-colour factions or vanilla-matters that would be interesting to explore its pitfalls and problems.

Let me think about it.

Any chance mutate gets in on that modified action? If keywords, rules text, etc are trending toward more easily comprehensible at face value, it makes sense to allow keywords like modified to be inclusive to mutate, which could use the support.

Why don’t we just include every old mechanic that flavorfully could make sense with modified? We could include mutate. And threshold. And amplify. And exalted. And augment. And embalm. And haunt. And emerge. And transform. And soulbond. And hellbent. That’s the problem. The game’s almost thirty years old. We’ve made a lot of mechanics. If every new mechanic tried to include every old mechanic that possibly could apply, we couldn’t fit the reminder text on the card (and it starts getting a lot more complicated).What we do is pick the most common and available mechanics (ideally ones in the set) and count those. Every aura, equipment or card that adds counters to creatures is a lot of backward compatibility.

Hi Mark, long time reader first time questioner. Would you say theres much design space for enchantments that enchant other enchantments. Maybe to amplify their effect? A la Bestow but for non creatures?

It’s limited design space, but not empty.

Why do you have limits in sets on old keywords? If a single card would fit the flavour perfectly with evoke, and another with multiplier, and another with amplify, but you don't want any more, why not just print them?

We don’t have hard and fast limits but we also want to make sure that each set has enough new stuff.

Champion or Amplify ?

Champion.

How likely are we to see Amplify coming back?

Maro Magic 8-Ball says, “Outlook not so good.”