Are there any mechanics you felt you used all design space In the past that now has more to use due to changes in color pie or design technology?

There are definitely mechanics that have a tight design space that there isn’t a lot of room to make more practical designs. Cipher and fabricate are two examples. (And yes, there is room to make cipher spells in the three colors we didn’t.)

How does Cipher have a limited design space? Cheap cards with any existing saboteur effect that’s basically an aura with that saboteur effect but you also get a free cast. Expensive cards with a normal Instant/Sorcery effect that gets the bonus of repeatability. Cards with “if this spell is encoded onto a creature” and have effects that care about the creature. Cards with “if this spell is not encoded” and change the effect if it’s been hard cast. Tons of flexibility, and super flavorful for UB.

The big limited factor is the effect has to work both as a spell and as a saboteur effect. The latter greatly restricts what can be done as it has to be valuable at a moment that’s a bit awkward. For instance, temporary creature boosts aren’t useful.

I know they are relatively low on the storm scale, but I really like both Haunt and Cipher. They both feel like you are doing something with your cards that they don't normally do, which I think is really cool. Do you think there's room for them returning somewhere, or similar mechanics being printed?

I think haunt has more potential than cipher as cipher has so much less practical design space.

If you took another look at cipher and decided to add a variant where some effects would be cast at next upkeep instead of when damage is done, do you think (with caveat that your not the rules manager) it might be possible to just redefine cipher with the two options, or would that be a different mechanic?

That would be a different mechanic. We have discussed it.

If/When - Cipher (supplemental sets) I saw Cipher is a "Storm Scale 9" in an article from 2016. Could that be improved (especially in a supplemental product) by simply not restricting it to U/B? I could definitely see a Flame Jab variant, a Bolt variant, a Rampant Growth variant, and several others that would be sort of a "Build your own Titan" style cycle. Heck, I'd love to see an *Arcane* Cipher, so you can splice it :)

Cipher has a very small design space. Obviously, opening it to other colors gets you some more designs, but even with that it’s limited.

What's the most disappointing example of a design space that turned out to be much smaller than expected?

Cipher had way less design space than I’d hoped.

In a recent DTW, you mentioned that Cipher didn’t end up having much drain space because you couldn’t use combat-oriented effects after the damage was done (giant growth being your example). Did you consider Cipher to be (and I’m not 100% sure how the wording might be) something like “after blockers are declared and this creature remains unblocked”? That would have enabled pump spell effects and other effects like giving it double-strike, or even team-boosting “all creatures get +1/+1” effects because it would trigger before damage.

And it would have made it significantly harder to understand. Grok-ability is important.

When it comes to mechanical depths, do you think shallow mechanics could be less so by expanding the limitations they previously had, such as adding a color or by allowing a new card type to use them? I.e Aeve, Progenitor ooze? Or give red access to Cipher?

When judging mechanical depth, we look beyond restrictions applied in its first outing.

If Cipher and/or haunt were done today, would they be DFCs that were auras on the back?

One of the challenges in R&D is any two-state card could be done as a DFC. We have to figure out when it’s the best time to use that technology.

When you say that Cipher ran out of design space, is that accounting for the fact that it was only in two of the five colors?

That didn’t help.