In the Fallen Empires DTW (which I loved by the way), you mention that Fallen Empires had almost no flying or other evasion. Do you think that might have been the result of building the set “too top down,” meaning they had great ideas about the factions and simply forgot to include evasive creatures because the factions they came up with were all land and sea armies? This feels like a good lesson that could be useful to anyone designing a set without a design skeleton.

The East Coast Playtesters just weren’t super fond of flying. Most their sets had a smaller percentage of fliers than average (at the time).

if or when, nontoken army creature?btw I love all these new modern horizons commons! The designs are very cool and they make my melvin brain happy. Please give everyone involved in the design of Warped Tusker 3.75/3.5 high fives

If. We’re planning to keep it tied to Amass right now. High fives shall be applied.

If/when: nontoken card with usually-token subtypes (such as Army, Blood, or Role)

We’ve made artifact cards that are Clue and Food, so Blood could happen. Army wants to stay only on tokens made by Amass as it causes balance issues if we start making Army cards. (I realize Changeling exists.) Roles probably want to stay on tokens as it conveys token-ness.

If or when: the Army creature type on a non-token?

If. Making Army creature cards would restrict what future Amass cards could do. Having the token restricted to the Amass mechanic is an important balance tool.

If you were to do amass in another color (let’s say you were making a white human army), would you do “Amass white humans N”, have “Amass humans N” be inherently white, or do “Gather humans N” (or some word other than amass that signifies that it’s white)? The last two seem potentially confusing and the first one seems wordy. Is there a better solution that I’m missing?

My gut is we’d do Amass white Humans, if we were going to create new colors.

If/When: at least one card that lets you amass an army with a creature type of the player’s choice.

If. It needs a set that wants amass creatively and where that choice is relevant, but I could imagine such a thing.

I saw the question about amassing without an extra creature type, and you said that it needed an extra type for the token art. If we saw an army like the boros legion (comprising of multiple creature types) would you make the armies second type something like soldier? Thus allowing the token art to feature, for example, a goblin, giant, angel and human all on one token?

The question was about having no type, not no second type.

Most of my issue with UB, particularly the commander decks, is their lack of availability on MtGO, as well as their lack of cohesion at some points. Individually, the cards are absolutely flavor wins, but as part of a precon they really don't work cohesively. Take the Timey Wimey precon for example. That deck was absolutely pulling itself in different directions by trying to be time counters and investigate, and then several cards that had nothing to do with either strategy. I would have been more satisfied had the deck been all in on the time counters, rather than trying to split the deck's strategy.Another example is the Ruinous Powers 40K precon. It had a very heavy demon theme, but it was split between demons-matter/aggro and cascade/spellslinger. Flavorfully each card is an absolute banger. But the decks as a whole really lack a real focus on one or the other. An example of UB doing well is the LotR set as a whole. It allowed for flavor wins while still keeping themes appropriate for its strategy, with blue/black/red being heavy on amassing orc armies and buffing orcs, while green/blue was focused on scrying and payoffs for scrying. Flavor wins, while still keeping a clear focus for deckbuilding.

You’re comparing apples and oranges. A preconstructed deck has different limitations than a randomized product.

If/when: Nontoken Armies printed in the same set as Amass?

If. I’m not sure we want to use Army outside of tokens.

Re: Amass. In the future could color get the same treatment as creature types did in LTR to let you make armies that are different colors as well as different creature types? E.g. Amass red Goblins. Amass blue Merfolk.

That’s not how we currently do Amass, but who knows?