hey mark, it's my birthday today! for my trivia I'd like to ask; what was something special or exciting about your birthday this year??

It was my first birthday party since the pandemic started. My family made crab at home during the pandemic, but it was cool returning to tradition.

Hey mark! I’ve been looking forward to Outlaws of Thunder Junction since it was announced (that name is *the* coolest), but I looked it up and found out it’s the 100th Magic expansion! Is WOTC planning on doing anything special to commemorate that?

What exactly to count as the 100th expansion is a bit tricky. Do you count core sets? If yes, all of them or just ones with new content? Do things like March of the Machine: Aftermath, which was Standard-legal count?

Why are citizen tokens stronger than soldier tokens?

They aren’t, except when involved in a planet-wide celebration, and then they’re just so excited. : )

Is there a reason Celebration counts "nonland" permanent only? Could it have been like "If X or more permanents entered the battlefield"?

If we counted land, we’d have to go to three, so then you’d need to play two spells and hit your land drop, which plays worse.

One thing I think would be really cool on Arena is if there was a separate art for Adventures, so when the Adventure is on the stack, we can see questing druid seeking the beast. Similarly, there could be a dragon art for Goddric when he is in celebration mode. Surely this would be within the rules since non-un-cards can't care about the art?

The larger issue is art resources.

Happy Yargle Day! <3

Happy Yargle Day, everyone!

I wanna second the support for more cards representing joy and celebration in magic! It makes the game feel way deeper, thank you all :)

You’re welcome.

Reading a lot of your posts, I think I am understanding that there are certain aspects of a cards design that are not part of what you do that I assumed would be part of the design process for any card. eg templating card text, exact mana costs for a card. What are some aspects of the process of making a card that are within and outside of your scope?

I, and my team, are the architects. We take a blank piece of paper and craft a structure with themes and mechanics. We’re not responsible for the choices of any one card’s design, but rather the bigger picture of what the set is.I’ll use Wilds of Eldraine as an example. Vision design (with help from exploratory design) chose to focus more on fairy tales and make each draft archetype match a fairy tale (of which we chose which ones). We chose to focus more on enchantments and made roles, bargain, and celebration (the latter unkeyworded). We suggested bringing back Adventures (and pitched off-color and on enchantments) and Food tokens. There are some cards we designed that happen to make it to print, but the vast majority of individual cards were made during set design.

Happy Father's Day by the way, Mark!

Thanks. My family saw “Elemental”, ate at a Chicago-style pizza place we like, and had dessert a place with homemade ice cream sandwiches. All in all, a very nice Father’s Day.

Has the design of Quilting been influenced by the fact that it's the 100th Expansion? Has that milestone led to selection of the theme? Is there planned to be some celebration of that milestone?

No one even knew it was the 100th expansion until I pointed it out. Even then, it’s pretty subjective how exactly you select the “100th expansion”.