Batches

Balance Between Creativity and Feasibility

Part of Vision Design is pushing the boundaries of Magic (I believe). Sometimes, that means brainstorming wild successes like double faced cards or morph , but other times there are mechanics like the Animal batch or LCI’s gem resources that get killed by set or play design. Does vision design have limits on what they can propose? how do you foster outside-the-box creativity while keeping unfeasable ideas in check?

Part of pushing boundaries is doing things that end up being too far, but you don’t know the line if you never test it.

Batches Mechanics Morph Play Design Vision Design

Defining the Animal Super-Batch

The decision to define the animal "super-batch" by real-world animals seems very strange to me. I suppose it works on Bloomburrow (because you'd separately decided to make all the Bloomburrow animals "real" animals) but it doesn't make a lot of flavor sense. A resident of Ravnica, for instance, doesn't know that a boar is a "real" animal but an indrik is not. They think of them both as part of the natural order.Was it ever considered to define the animal batch by what people in-universe would think of as "animals", i.e., including mythological and fictional animals but excluding sapients and the other categories on your list?

The concern was what was intuitive to the people actually playing the game, not what fictional character might think.

Batches Bloomburrow Boars Flavor Natural Order

Possibility of a Future 'Mega-Batch'

If/When a Mega Batch in a set like Animal was going to be, or do the problems that sunk animal likely sink any future 'mega batch'?

If. I think animals was one of our best shots at a mega-batch, so it not working doesn’t give me a lot of hope.

Batches If/When

Batch Preview for New Type

Is it possible to use a batch to preview an upcoming card type, such as "[existing type], [existing type], and [new type] are blahs"? Or are Eye of Ugin style previews basically impossible without blocks?

It’s possible, but needs a compelling reason. It’s not dependent on blocks.

Batches Card Types Eyes Spoilers Eye of Ugin

Justifying Minotaur/Cow Distinction

I appreciate you holding the line on minotaur/cow. I think Minotaur as a type has immense unique resonance (mythological and game history wise). I also think “cow” has a lot of connotations that don’t align reasonably with the central vibe of the creature type, which is to say aggression. I could see a batch at some point that includes oxes, but I’d just say that, at least as someone running Minotaur decks for a decade and a half, I’d be very disappointed in a change.

I could imagine Ox becoming Cow. I don’t see Minotaur becoming Cow.

Batches Creatures Minotaurs Oxen

Insights on Animal Megabatch

Can you share a little bit about the Animal megabatch? I had been hoping for something like that.

The basic premise was making a batch that was much bigger than five items, but something so intuitive that players wouldn’t need a written out list. Animals worked well for about 95% of the card types, but had problems with the last 5%.

Batches Card Types

Batching Cards Potential?

Hi Mark, could the rules batch cards that have two different spells on them? Can they mechanically group together split cards, certain MDFCs, cards with adventures?

We for sure can list it out. I don’t know if the rules can handle the description.

Batches Modal Dual Faced Cards Rules Spells Split Cards

Request for Card Errata

Hello, Mark, quick request: I'd like you errata the Outlaw batch to include Wizards effective immediately, and I'd also like you premptively errata all Lizard Warlocks in Bloomburrow into Lizard Wizards.This might have some unforseen play balance concerns and it would be tremendously confusing to have so many new cards not do what they say, but look at the upside: "Lizard Wizard" rhymes.Please and thank you.

If only creature types rhyming was a higher priority for R&D. : )

Appreciation Batches Bloomburrow Creatures Errata Game Balance Humor Lizards Warlocks

Raccoons over Badgers in Bloomburrow

Mark, I am a huge fan of the animal fantasy genre stories (Redwall was a favorite growing up) and particularly of Badgers, and I got really excited when Hugs was shown in the first batch of previews. I was somewhat heartbroken to find out that the Red-Green tribe was Raccoons rather than Badgers. I understand that Raccoons are likely a more popular creature, but I wanted to both express my love for Hugs specifically and a desire to give him more friends.

Badgers started as our choice for red/green. Part of our research was to look into market research on other animal choices and Raccoons scored very high, so we made the swap.

Badgers Batches Bloomburrow Creatures Green Gruul (R/G) Raccoons Spoilers

Creature Type Classification

Why can’t we just have a whole taxonomy of creature types, so chicken, penguin, and hawk are all unique types included in the “Bird” batch, and then we have which is itself included in the “reptile” batch together with dinosaur, Chameleon, and snake.

I don’t think we want that much batching.

Batches Bird Chicken Creatures Dinosaur Snake

Erratas in Existing Batches

Is it possible to errata in new things into an already existing batch?

Theoretically, but the bar is high.

Batches Errata

Batch Suggestion Day Idea

Could we have a "batch suggestion day" where people suggest batches and you give an if/when rating to them or something?

Almost all batches would be if, so I’m not sure how exciting a day that would be.

Batches If/When

Potential for 'Rodent' Category

Any chance of a “rodent” batch for Rats, Mice and Squirrels? Feels weird to have a type for each of them when all Birds get one.

There’s a chance.

Batches Bird Mouse Rat Rat Squirrel

Understanding Warlocks and Outlaws

Why are Warlocks, Outlaws?

They are the magic users that most lean towards criminality. Being the game is about casting magic, we needed a magic user in the batch to cover card concepts that needed to be outlaws and magic users.

Batches Warlock

On Permanents Cohesion and Batching

For me, the historic batch is the best as it ties together different kinds of permanents in a cohesive way, which blows my mind. Outlaw was great in limited, but seems less impressive.

Batching is a tool that we can use in different ways. That’s the value of a good design tool.

Batches Historic Limited Permanents

Defining 'Evil' Creatures

What do you think of batching "evil" creatures for white targeted removal?

Evil is pretty subjective.

Batches Creatures White

Request For Pets Batch

Since people are requesting batches…I’d like to request PETS: dogs, cats…maybe mice, ferrets? I am sure it would be poplular.

Maybe one day.

Batches Cat Dog Ferret Mouse

Batching in Set Design

You have to give me a name when you batch things.

Apologies, I was thinking "Deity/Deities". Spirits were included as a more common type for the group but also have ties to the grouping through Kamigawa's Kami

Okay. Batches happen when there is a set for them that really wants them and we think the audience would enjoy the flavor of the batch. It’s also something we don’t do all that often.

Batches Flavor Set Design Spirit

Creating Deity Batches

Thoughts on a batch consisting of Elder, Archeon, God, Spirit, and Avatar?

You have to give me a name when you batch things.

Avatar Batches Elder God Spirit

Assassin Viability in Commander

You could make freerunning usable in commander by printing more assassins. Thus making assassin based decks viable in the format possibly.

Assassins Creed adds a whole bunch of new Assassins (the vast majority of new creatures are Assassins), and the Outlaw batch also encouraged sets around it to add more Assassins. With all that done, there’s still just not that much to choose from for a singleton 100-card format. (The database I just looked at had 119 Assassins. In contrast there are 602 Elves.)

Assassin Batches Card Printing Commander Creatures Elf Freerunning Singleton