Hi Mark, I'm a big fan of Bloomburrow's Planeswalkers' Guide. It was great to get so much info about the plane and its inhabitants!I loved one part of it so much, I made this Tumblr account so I could ask this question: May I please request a card for Lily of Valley, the mousefolk who saved Valley from the Calamity Beasts in the distant past?

I’ll pass the request along.

Hi Mark, in one of your Lessons Learnt Podcasts (I think on Dragon’s Maze) you talked about how you learned not to build up wrong expectations among players. Now the whole Bloomburrow narrative (first image shared, trailer, the red season mythic) suggested that there would be a huge, red, wolf-like Calamity Beast in the set - and now there is no mythic calamity beast in red at all! What happened?

Creatures appearing in art are not a promise that a corresponding card will exist.

I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

hi a friend walked me through a commander game and I liked it and so I got a couple premade decks. I then went to a couple commander nights and I kinda liked it except for the part where I felt like I was a little kid with floaties in the middle of the ocean trying to sing a little song to myself so I wouldn't think about the things that might be lurking just below the surface that I can't see.

Magic is vast and deep and I don't know how I can enjoy playing when there's just too much. I get that the hugeness is part of its staying power, but it feels too big and too much to even approach beyond playing my premade deck and hoping the people at the table won't look down on me for it (which they often do). Even looking up tutorials and guides is overwhelming because each one of them is sharing a *different* tiny slice of material! I haven't felt this baby-beginner starting something new in a very long time (and I say that as someone that is otherwise well-versed in being a terrible beginner at new things).

Is there a way to play magic without getting absolutely lost in the depths? or is that the nature of the beast and I just gotta "git gud"?

The two formats I would suggest are draft or Cube. Both use a much smaller card pool, one you can more easily learn about.

RE: elk vs. deer. i feel like the first appearance of a creature type often sets the precedent. the first elk card (originally beast) was gang of elk. so when somebody went to update that card it made sense to make it an elk. similarly, a lot of early dog cards were called "hounds" which is probably what started that whole debacle (snow hound, ghost hounds, warhounds).

Early precedence holds a lot of weight.

Re: drawing the line for humanoid type changes. Doesn't that mean Naga shouldn't be changed? They aren't an original mtg name. Also, I feel like getting rid of types just because the fantasy races were made by you guys and not storytellers of the past is a bit sad. There are a lot of creatures original to magic that I hope don't go anywhere, like Brushwaggs and Atogs which could be beasts, and Myr or Sliths that could be constructs, or an extreme that I doubt will happen, Eldrazi to horrors. It feels more special.

We’re not getting rid of original creatures we made up. Those will remain. We’re just being consistent with how we treat made-up animal humanoids. Again, a change we made in the late 1990’s.

I started paying attention to creature types more, and it got me thinking - what is really the difference between Golem, Construct, an Robot? I feel like what separates Golems is that golems are "alive" in that they have something that humanifies them, whether it be rational thinking or something magical or spiritual, where as constructs and robots are tools created to serve a specific purpose and don't have that higher awareness. But what separates a construct from a robot? Sci-fi vs fantasy?

Construct is a catch-all, like Beast, when we don’t have a creature type that properly catches something.

What color pie are the Teen Titans? (I best know the '04 tv show)

Beast Boy feels obvious, Raven as well, but what about Starfire, Robin, Cyborg, and if you're a comics guy, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Bumblebee etc?

I think the five main ones hit the five colors (at least at their core)White - RobinBlue - CyborgBlack - RavenRed - StarfireGreen - Beast BoyKid Flash is core red, Aqualad, is core white or blue, and Bumblebee is core blue.

First, I want to say I really like Thunder Junction more than I thought I would. It could end up being my favorite set this year. Great job to you and the team! Second, back in AFR, the commander precons had a humanoid adventurer face commander and a monster alt commander. I thought that was really cool because I'm a big fan of monsters and weird creatures and love building decks with them as the commander. Magic has some really great monsterous creature types that are underrepresented as legendary creatures. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I'd love for one humanoid and one beast/monster commander to be the norm for precon design. The Grand Larceny, Desert Bloon, and Quick Draw precons are great examples of this. Having Yuma, Gonti, and Stella Lee as the humanoid face commanders and Kirri Talented Sprout, Felix Five Boots, and Eris Roar of the Storm as the more monstrous alt commanders.
I bring this up because I was really hoping for something a little more monsterous for the Most Wanted precon alt commander. Like a Skeleton or Nightmare or Horror or Minotaur, or Bird. Something along those lines would be really interesting with one of the outlaw creature types. Instead, we got a Dwarf. Vihaan Goldwaker is a great card, don't get me wrong. I just wish that every precon could have alt commanders that are a little more "out there" in terms of creature type usage instead of another human or dwarf or elf, etc. What are your thoughts on this?

My thoughts are there’s some one out there who loves Dwarves who’s super happy because we made a Dwarf card for them. I hear you that you’d like more non-humanoid legendary creatures, and that is something we’re dedicated to doing, as evidenced by the decks you did enjoy, but there’s a lot of player desires to meet, which means we need to spread the love a bit.

So I heard a rumor about a new secret lair Questing Beast that in addition to not having a text box, also doesn’t have a visible name, mana cost, p/t, or art. Can you confirm or deny if that will be coming this year and if we should expect some other cards to get a similar treatment?

It doesn’t even have a card. It’s just a concept.