Hi Mark, Happy Friday the 13th! I wish to invoke the sacred right of birthday trivia. Can you tell us anything about my favorite card Squirrel Nest? Thanks

After the popularity in tournaments of Deranged Hermit, the brand team expressed concern that Squirrels weren’t “bad ass” enough for Magic (it was a different time), so I promised we’d make our Squirrels more “bad ass” which is how we got the origibal art for Squirrel Nest.How are we not bad ass? - 🐿

Hey MaRo, been following you for almost a year from France 🇫🇷 , now being deployed overseas with fellow USA 🇺🇸 comrades. Yesterday was my birthday 🎂, that I spent away from home. I try to collect as many Squirrel 🐿 Magic cards as I can, and I know you love them too, so... do you have any trivia about the now-discontinued Squirrels in Magic (and I know that you designed most of them, so that's no trivia 😅) ? Thx, Raphaël.

The brand team of long ago said they wanted more “bad ass” squirrels if we made them so in Odyssey we made one that collected eyeballs rather than nuts.Happy Birthday!

It's my birthday today! Could I get some trivia on my favorite commander, Empress Galina? Or, if you don't have any, some unknown trivia about Squirrels in Magic?

I wanted to put Squirrels in Odyssey block, but the brand team was worried they weren’t “bad ass” enough, so I promised to make them more vicious. That’s how we got a Squirrel collecting a human eyeball instead of a nut.Happy Birthday!

You should write that Bad Ass novel.

I like to think any novel write would be bad ass. : ) I think under 10% of the readers know what you are referencing. Unhinged had a joke about a romance novel starring Bad Ass from the card Bad Ass.

Let's say I've enchanted my Bad Ass with Phyresis, making it a 3.5/1 creature with infect. If I attack with him and he's unblocked, will he give the opponent three and a half poison counters? If I attack with him and a Wall of Denial blocks him, does the wall get three -1/-1 counters and a -.5/-.5 counter? And can I use Steady Progress to get my opponent up to five poison counters by giving him an additional poison counter AND an additional half of a poison counter?

Yes, all those half things happen. I answered your question mostly to comment on how much I like you photo. : )

You said that Innistrad had a horizontal cycle of mythic rare legendary creatures, one for each tribe, and that the werewolf was postponed because of Garruk Relentless taking the mythic slot for double-faced cards, right? There's four legendary creatures in Innistrad: Geist of Saint Traft, Grimgrin, Olivia Voldaren, and Mikaeus. Is Mikaeus part of that cycle? Or should we wait for a mythic green-white legendary human?

What I said was that we created for each of the five main tribes (humans, spirits, vampires werewolves & zombies) we created a mythic creature that we thought of as a “bad ass” of his or her tribe. Yes, Mikaeus was the human mythic. The werewolf mythic is later in the block.