Hi Mark,It’s my birthday and me and my friends are going to play some OTJ sealed today. In honor of this, can I get some trivia on Outlaws, my favorite mechanic to come out of the set?

We made a list for Outlaw of any creature type that might make sense:

• Assassin
• Barbarian
• Berserker
• Minion
• Mercenary
• Ninja
• Pirate
• Rebel
• Rogue
• Warlock

Assassin and Rogue felt like automatic includes. We added Mercenary because we wanted the “henchperson” token to be a Mercenary. The creative team asked us to add Warlock because we needed to have an outlaw spellcaster to hit all the card concepts. That’s what we handed over to set design.When making a batch, we do between two and five, with three being optimal. Four seemed in a good spot and allowed set design to add something if they had to. They added Pirate because of all the Pirate cards in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. We did talk through many of the others. We considered bringing Minion back instead of doing Mercenary (we stopped doing it a while ago). We talked a lot about Ninja. In the end though, we felt this collection best served the mechanic.Happy Birthday!

Loving things so far but a couple of questions, why weren't Ninjas considered outlaws and was clash considered for this set? The latter seems like it would fit flavor as a standoff with the higher cost being who drew and shot quicker.

Repeated batches, meaning things we use on multiple cards in the same set, are normally restricted between two and five items, with three being the sweet spot. We needed Rogues and Warlocks to hit all the creative executions we wanted. Mercenary was needed because that was our henchperson token. We also knew Assassin’s Creed with its Assassin typal theme was coming. We turned those four in when we handed off from vision, leaving one potential space open so set design could add something if needed. That something was Pirate due to all the ones added by The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. As I show in today’s article, we considered all the following:AssassinBarbarianBerserkerMinionMercenaryNinjaPirateRebelRogueWarlockThere just wasn’t room for all of them. Also, we prioritized what would be in the set. So some things, like Ninja, didn’t make the cut.As for clash, it’s just wasn’t popular enough when we first did it to bring it back.

Hello Mark! I recently build a Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients deck to play planeschase with all my friends but i was wondering, any affect like Wyll, Blade of Frontiers or barbarian class that states specifically "when you roll a die roll two and ignore the lower result" how does that work with the planar die?

It doesn’t as it doesn’t have a “lower result”.

In regards to the question regarding Wyll/Barbarian class and dice rolling in Unfinity, i think the primary issue is that the only eternal legal versions of Krark's Other Thumb all force the higher roll on the dice. The fact that the Unfinity cards don't always want the higher number makes it rather difficult to use with the eternal legal versions of Krark's Other Thumb effects.

There are a bunch of eternal legal cards in Unfinity that let you manipulate die rolls.

Zombie is used as a race most of the time, right? So why is Shivan Zombie ordered as "Phyrexian Barbarian Zombie" on gatherer?

Zombie is sometimes a race, sometimes a class. It depends what other creature types are on the card.

Hi, I have a Silver Bordered Question on How Barbarian Class + Krark's Other Thumb would Interact with each other?

So let’s say you have both out and another card makes you roll a six sided die. You would eventually roll two dice for the initial die roll and two dice for the additional die roll. You then pick which of the first two die rolls to count as your initial roll and which of the second two dice rolled count as you second die rolled. You then choose between those two dice which one you want to count as your die roll. Or in a simpler practical sense, roll four dice and pick one.

Would barbarian class have you roll the planar die twice, then do both results (since there isn't a lower result to ignore), or does it not effect the planar die at all?

It can’t affect the planar die as it can’t have a lower result.

As far as Magic creature types, what's the difference between a Barbarian and a Berserker?

Self-control.

Why isn't Barbarian the standard fighter class for red? We have Warriors, but Barbarian carries a more distinct flavor, and a lot of the Warriors that appear in red could reasonably be classified as Barbarians.

That’s not true. Only a small subset of the Warriors in red would be Barbarians, even if we were being loose in definition.

Hello Mark,From what I understand, the issue about creating new creature types is to find a balance between flavor and tribal/mechanical support. What do you think about creating more cards with "cross tribe" support in mind? (Especially for niche creature types; I really liked lovisa coldeyes supporting barbarians and berserkers for example)

We do cross creature types where it flavorfully makes sense.