You said "I do think the chances of a multiplayer-focused booster are still good." Does this include the chances of a set focused on multiplayer in general, not specifically only at Commander?

I don’t think we’ll make a multiplayer-focused product that doesn’t appeal to Commander players.

People have complained about not having enough cards to fill out colors for limited with the switch to play boosters and I've started noticing an uptick in hybrid mana cards which would be a solution to this problem. Is this correlated, or is it just a coincidence that we've recently seen more hybrid and that it helps address this issue?

It’s correlated.

In Bloomburrow's design am I seeing the needle move slightly back towards "block monsters" (iirc named after the Goblins and other ilk of Onslaught)? It is clear that you are still seeding prior and subsequent sets, but has there been a push to put more strong themed cards together in a set? This might be more noticible with the creature type focus or due to the set ushering in rotation.

The change away from blocks and towards play boosters (two different forces) has allowed us to focus more power of a theme into a single set than we used to.

If you're playtesting major changes to the draft format (e.g. number and composition of cards in a booster, number of cards each pick) or a new draft format entirely (e.g. Rochester, Winston, Rotisserie), what sort of feedback or data would you try to get to make sure it works well and is fun and interesting? A friend made a really interesting suggestion recently, and I'd love to try it out, but I want to have an idea beforehand of what to ask and pay attention to.

First and foremost is it fun to play. The biggest issues with new formats is do they adapt to what you have, or do you have to change the product to work with the new format.

People aren't understanding what a value booster is- it's a low price point impulse buy for grocery stores or pharmacies or toy aisles, not a thing that card shops (usually) would actively stock. These are more in the vein of "saved my treat money from lunch to buy boosters on the way home from school" or "was picking up prescriptions and decided to buy a pack instead of my usual candy bar. Opened a $4 uncommon!", not "cracked a case of these at the LGS"

Correct.

Why don't the value boosters guarantee a rare?

The point of the booster pack is to be a low cost alternative. Having rares show up in some boosters was how we were able to do that.

Hi Maro: I’m definitely disappointed that there won’t be normal Commanders in the Commander decks. If people want a foil or showcase version then isn’t that what the collector boosters are for? I recently picked up the last set of challenger decks for casual play and it’s annoying I need to order another Kappa Tech-Wrecker and normal VOW/MID basics to replace included cards. I absolutely love precons — note my profile pic — and it’d be sad if they became another thing which “isn’t for me”.

The challenge is some players want one thing and some want another and we can only do one thing. As for putting the Commanders in the collector booster, we’ve done extensive polling of the audience for the collector booster and they mostly don’t want the Commander cards in the product.

Hey Mark just wanted to say that the news about the new "value boosters" feels like a kick in the teeth as someone who has had to give up drafting as often as I used to enjoy because of the removal of draft boosters increase in costs (not to mention how that affected how limited plays). I'm all for having more afforable ways to interact with this game obviously, but when you tell me that I can't play draft at the price point I could afford before because they were too niche to sell then follow up by releasing a new niche pack type I can't help but feel betrayed. I love this game and I love how fun limited has been in recent years just wish something similar to draft boosters (which was already a budget version of our new play boosters) could have been a priority.

Not enough players wanted to buy the draft booster. That’s why it went away. It was nothing nefarious. We can only sell something that there’s a large enough market for.The value booster is an attempt to solve a completely different problem. There are a lot of stores that want a lower priced Magic booster option, so we’re experimenting with something for them. If there isn’t an audience for it, this too will go away.The two boosters are quite different from one another and serve very different audiences.

Mark, I play a lot of limited and one thing I've noticed with the new play boosters is that it is no longer guaranteed to have a card of every color in it. This is especially glaring in a set like MKM or MH3 with multicolored commons. In MH3 especially, since there are no colorless commons, I've opened several packs where it is missing a color and the only cards in my other color are multicolored, meaning I basically don't get a 1st pick. Is this a known problem? Is anything being done about it?

The collation only allows us to guarantee four colors and not five.

Hi mark. There were a few people who had commented on the technology and aesthetic of Duskmourne and how it feels too close to the present, referencing planes like Capenna or Neo-kamigawa as other examples of modernity in Magic’s fantasy setting. Because I am the main character and my opinion is the most important one, I thought I’d give my two cents on the topic.Although kamigawa and capenna are obviously more “modern” than a plane like innistrad, they still don’t feel like “now”. By definition, sci-fi is not modern. Although Neon kamigawa doesn’t feel like high fantasy, it doesn’t feel “modern” to me either, it’s too far in the future. In the opposite direction, Capenna feels too far in the past to feel “modern”. Yeah, arc spitter is a Tommy gun and the treasure token is a martini glass, but it still doesn’t feel like the present. My grandpa wasn’t even born until after the end of prohibition. Time period Capenna is based on was literally a century ago. Sure the aesthetic isn’t as far back in history as the aesthetic of a knight in shining armor, but it’s still far enough back that it feels like “another time”, at least to me. I think the reason those two planes pass the vibe check is because they feel different enough from modern day. TV’s have existed since the late 1920’s, so it would have been historically accurate if the plane themed around 1920s America had TVs. but that still *feeeeeels* wrong. The vibes are off. Yeah sci fi japan would probably have cell phones or something, but that just feels wrong. In other words, fantasy (to me) isn’t about looking like lord of the rings, it’s about NOT looking like everyday life.This is where Duskmourne comes in. I wasn’t alive in the 70’s or 80’s. Heck, I’m so young that my parents hadn’t even met until after homelands came out. But the 70’s and 80’s feels like modern day. Screaming nemesis and cursed recording have TVs in their art. The booster fun frame looks like it would be on a ghostbusters poster. I feel like I saw my baby cousin wearing the exact same outfit as Toby just the other day. The term “fear of missing out” is just such a modern day thing, even if that concept isn’t new. I’m withholding my judgement until I see the whole set, but based on what we’ve seen so far, I (somewhat) agree with the sentiment a lot of Duskmourne feels too “real”. I’m sure more detail will be given closer to release, but I would be really interested in learning the whole process of how y’all built this world, even more interested than I would be with any other plane.

We’re trying something new. Some people seem to like it, some don’t. Time will show whether it was overall a good idea. I will say we need time to better gauge it. There are a lot of very popular Magic things that had an initial negative opinion.