is darkness from legends a bend break or neither?

Black can technically get “all attacking creatures get -N/-0”, so it’s more bend than break, but not something we want to be doing in black.

“ The answer is 2. Each creature has to be dealt lethal damage which is 1 point of deathtouch damage, the rest tramples over to the player.” Isn’t the answer to all blocking creatures with both deathtouch and trample scenarios ‘It depends how the attacking player decides to assign damage’? Can’t you assign more damage than lethal to a creature?

Yes, but we can assume the players are making optimal choices to win the game.

I've listened to your Drive to Work on ONE. I was surprised to hear you didn't mention the problems of proliferate and corrupted in this set (for limited). Proliferate requires to have a poison counter, which is more likely as the starting player. Corrupted was more likely to achieve as the starting player, resulting in a snowballing effect. Indeed, ONE had a big OTP advantage. I know you prefer to promote attacking, but sometimes that does cause the defending player to have little comeback tools.

I haven’t seen any data that going first in Phyrexia: All Will Be One has a higher win rate than other premier limited format.

Hey Mark! In your handoff part 2 you note that you found that "spree cards are already wordy and the flavor words weren't worth the space they took up." I must register my intense disagreement. I ADORE the added flavor of things like Forgotten Realms, and I think I would have gotten a lot more into the feel of spree if I'd been able to choose between attacking stealthily and charging in. I'm curious if I'm alone or if others would have also really enjoyed that.

You’re glossing over the “already wordy” part. Flavor words often didn’t fit, and we didn’t want to be inconsistent with them.

Loved to hear stories about the top 20 evergreen mechanics. Flying is an elegant, intuitive mechanic. I found myself relistening to the part about Reach after a friend was lamenting about attacking into Robber of the Rich after he forgot it had "sneaky reach." I recall tidbits about "making sure creatures with flying have wings" etc and I feel like I've told myself "oh, it has a bow - it might have reach". Any stories/lessons about helping players avoid confusion and memory issues with Reach?

Reach is trickier because we made a decision not to have all tall creatures have reach. Usually if there’s a bow or a web, it has reach, but neither of those is 100%.

Ooo elaborate more on artifact walls please!

Here’s an example:Stone Wall 4Artifact T: Prevent all the damage of target attacking creature without flying.

The fun of a morph is not knowing which creature is face down. However in Khans you introduced what's called the 5-mana rule, which means that any creature that's a 2/3 or larger needs to cost 5-mana or more to flip. Doesn't this inherently make face-down cards less fun, if players can just follow the 5-mana rule and spend an entire game not having to make a significant choice related to face down cards?

And if it isn't, why is there no 5-mana rule for combat tricks?

First, let me clarify the 5-mana rule. If you block a face down morph creature with a face down morph creature, and one player turns their morph face up, if the morph cost is four or less, the creature won’t be able to destroy the face down creature without itself also dying. That means if its power is 2 or higher, its toughness is 2 or lower.This doesn’t mean you know what’s going to happen. The creatures could trade (both die), they could bounce (neither dies) or the face up creature could die (maybe it had a cool face up trigger). All it prevents is the face down creature dying without taking out the other creature.Once you get to five mana, which usually happens midgame, anything is fair game. The reason the rule exists is to stop players from turtling up with their face down creatures and not attacking. An important part of game design is pushing the game towards ending. Why is their no similar rule for combat tricks? Because they sit in your hand and mostly don’t discourage attacking.

If my opponent attacks me with all their creatures and I attack them with my party crasher, is my party crasher attacking alone?

Yes. “Attacking alone” cares about your creatures.

How is vigilance in red a bend? Red doesn't get to play both aggressively and defensively, it has to choose whether to bolt face or an attacking creature.

I don’t think we would put vigilance on a red creature. The issue at hand was there was only one 2/2 Knight creature token and we decided to allow the bend so Red could create a Samurai. It’s not the kind of thing we do often.

I REALLY enjoy the design of Weeping Angel. It's an angel, a white creature type, on a blue black card. But even though it's blue black mechanically, flash, first strike, vigilance, and removing an attacking creature are all white effects. It's white's iconic creature type out of color but still feeling white. That is just so cool. It also perfectly captures the Weeping Angel as a character so high fives to everyone for that amazing design.

I’ll pass the high fives along.