You mentioned that you think of powercreep in Magic as a matter of newer sets being more powerful than older sets. When I think of powercreep in Magic, I tend to think of individual cards being more powerful than older cards.For example, when Savannah Lions was first printed, it was a rare, since having a vanilla 2/1 for 1 mana value with no downside was considered good (I assume). Nowadays, there are seven 2/1s for 1 mana in standard alone, most of them are uncommons, and they all have abilities that aren't downsides. (That list is: Ascendant Packleader, Cheeky House-Mouse, Cult Conscript, Embereth Veteran, Falkenrath Pit Fighter, Hotshot Mechanic, and Recruitment Officer.) Furthermore, Savannah Lion's recent reprint in Dominaria Remastered puts it at a common, meaning that its relative power over Magic's lifetime has seemingly decreased.Is this idea of powercreep something that comes up during your design process, and if so, how does it get addressed?

The power level of creatures in Alpha was pretty weak. There is not, for example, a single Alpha creature we couldn’t reprint today for power level reasons. In contrast, there are a lot of noncreature cards we couldn’t reprint today for power level reasons.We have made a lot of creature cards. Many of them are below the top tier of what we can print. Making a card better than an existing card is not power creep. Making creatures above the top line of what’s acceptable is.

"It varies mechanic to mechanic, but they don’t score any lower as a group against other mechanics. Some, like Monarch, are quite popular."People are criticizing the helper card mechanics because they are very complex, require specific varied tracking and they are virtually impossible to play with unless you constantly refer to helper card (compared to most cards that you can understand by simply reading its oracle text or reminder text).The Monarch doesn't have any of those issues. It's an elegant and masterfully designed mechanic.

The Monarch is very simple and straightforward, so much so that the oracle text from The Monarch token could fit as reminder text on several monarch cards. That can't be said about Day/Night, The Initiative, Venture in the Dungeon, Rad counters or Tempted by the Ring.

I've probably looked at the double sided Tempted by the Ring helper token over 100 times and I can't confidently tell someone exactly how the mechanic works if I don't have the helper token to read from. It's an extremely complex and multifaceted mechanic. I would say more complicated and wordy than 98% of other Magic mechanics. Can you please make more "outside of the game" helper card style mechanics that are easy to comprehend and intuitive?The Monarch and Ascend are examples of mechanics like this. More of that please!

The more complex mechanics that create outside of the game elements are intimidating (i.e. Venture into the Dungeon, Tempted by the Ring, The Initiative, Day/Night) and in my experience, they slow down the game because players can't understand them easily.Lastly, I'm offering this feedback as a major Magic enthusiast and long time veteran player who also plays with experienced players regularly. I can't even begin to imagine how daunting these types of mechanics must feel for novice players!

I talk a lot about how different players enjoy different aspects of the game. What I talk far less about is different players struggle with different aspects. Some can’t handle excessive processing; some have issues with sequencing; some don’t understand the nuances of the rules; some aren’t good with memory. My best guess with you is you internalize (aka work from memory) card abilities most of the time, so cards which exceed your ability to memorize cause you issues.Because players see the game through the lens of their own experience, the feedback they tend to give is “stop doing thing X” because thing X is the element that they personally struggle with. The challenge is there are players that don’t struggle with that element of the game and thus enjoy thing X. For example, my biggest note on this blog about dungeons isn’t they’re too hard to process, but there aren’t enough of them. So, it’s a balance. We need to understand the ways in which people struggle and help accordingly where we can. I agree that we need to be cautious how complex and wordy we are on elements off the card. And we have to be careful how often we use that tool. Now there is a threshold where enough players struggle, that we have to question if a particular aspect is worth it. I don’t think we’re there yet with external game pieces, but I do loudly hear the note that we have to be better with as-fan of the helper cards showing up. The note that we need to auto-include more helper cards in the prerelease kits is also a strong one.So yes, I’m aware that outside game pieces come at a real cost for a certain type of player, and it is something we have to keep in mind when designing them. I personally think we could have simplified Tempted by the Ring a bit, for example, but I do think it was right to include in the product. Thanks for your feedback.

So now you ascend by geting permanents on the battlefield and descend when those permanents leave the battlefield. Interesting play on mechanics and language there.

: )

Are there any older creatures whose updated creature type is too long for those cards to be reprinted off of The List (Such as Ascendant Evincar now being a "Legendary Creature- Phyrexian Vampire Noble", for example)?

I assume there are. If we want to reprint them, we’ll have to get creative. EDIT: The question is referencing The List. Those reprints are straight pick-ups (meaning we just use the exact last printed version), so this isn’t an issue there.

May you give the Art team a huge hige five? Just saw Riveteers Ascendancy, and it is my favorite card art of New Cappena so far!

Will do!

Hi Mark,Seeing the art for Brokers Ascendancy, I was wondering is SNC supposed to be a light-hearted set or a more serious set? I wasn't expecting creatures like were seen in Alara sets (Aven, Cats, and Rhinos but in 'modern' dress).

The set has animal “people” in it, but it’s not meant to keep it from being serious. As with any Magic set, there is a range of tones, but the set is not intended to be overall light-hearted (like say Unfinity is).

How does Killer Cosplay work with banned cards? In a game of Un-Commander can I dress Stuffy Doll up as Golos, or animate a Sultai Ascendancy and dress it up as Leovold?

As long as it is an official Magic card that’s a creature, Killer Cosplay can copy it, provided another creature exists with the same mana cost. Remember the card is acorn, so it’s only in decks in most formats where everyone is on board with it being used.

with the recently spoiled Ascendant Spirit, are Ability Counters deciduous?

They’re slowly moving in that direction.

What ever happened to the Storm Scale articles on the wizards website? Will they ever return? (The last one was about Kaladesh and Amonkhet) They were very intriguing and insightful. Can we get storm scalings at least for Ixalan and beyond? Namely Explore, Enrage, Ascend, Mentor, Surveil, Jump-start, Undergrowth, Adapt, Addendum, Afterlife, Riot, Spectacle, Amass, Escape, Keyword Counters, Mutate, and Companion.

I’ll do other Storm Scale articles.

I recall you describing a test design for a Hercules card for Theros which pretty much had ascend. Was that card a direct inspiration for the ascend mechanic?

I think it was parallel design, meaning they created the mechanic unaware of Hercules’ existence. Nonetheless, when I first saw it, I did say, “You guys turned Hercules into a mechanic.” : )