Hey Mark,I'm putting together my first cube from cards in my collection. I've been playing/collecting seriously since about Strixhaven/Forgotten Realms, so cards from then until now make up the bulk of my collection.
Are there any mechanics or themes from the last few years that you feel were better than their reception suggested? Maybe they didn't get the love they deserved, and perhaps I should look at supporting them in my cube?

While Murders at Karlov Manor had its share of issues, I think collect evidence is a real solid mechanic, and something a cube could support well.

How recently could you pull mechanics or references into a set like MH3? This is about design and feedback timelines rather than specific mechanics but, hypothetically, could or would you put in a card with collect evidence or crimes if you had a really neat design, or would you not even try putting them in the file since you wouldn’t have seen the player response to them yet?

Modern Horizons tends to use mechanics that are already printed at the time of design.

Hey Mark could Collect Evidence 2+X exist to get an effect that refers to X but demands 2 more mana value on top of it?

I don’t think you can use either X in that manner or add 2, so no.

For folks expressing concern with mechanics like Collect Evidence, I want to point out that it’s just another keyword ability like Exert, Mill, Discover, or Amass. In fact, Exert and Mill are both used in costs and optional payments just like Collect Evidence.

Yes. It’s not something new.

Embalm and escape are no different than unearth or flashback. What flavorful word you drop in for a particular alternate casting cost or activated ability doesn't change the structure of how the ability is written. Commit a crime and collect evidence are uniquely templated and warp the text box around them. They stick out like a sore thumb compared to every other keyword

But they aren’t uniquely templated. Collect evidence, as an example, is templated like any other mechanic that uses the graveyard as a resource.

hey mark! recently people I know have been expressing issues with what I'm calling "vocabulary fatigue". Wizards has been recently utilizing a lot of very flavorful mechanic names and ability words, which is something i myself appreciate, as someone who plays a lot of limited and only needs to focus on a few of them at a time, but a lot of my friends are saying is making their experience with the recent sets worse, because they have to remember what cards do when it isn't super obvious from their actual text. In the past year or so we've had a lot of new "action batching" mechanics (by which i mean vocabulary that references a specific action or kind of action so that cards can more easily care about that action without spelling the action out every time) such as "the ring tempts you", "decend", "commit a crime", "collect evidence", "suspect", and "face a villainous choice" as opposed to older magic sets, which didn't deal with this design space as much. although other mechanics in the same vein exist, like Monsterous, their prolificness in the last year or so feels like complexity creep.Although the names are flavorful and saving on card space as allows for powerful and interesting cards, the volume of new vocabulary for older pretty routine actions (such as making your opponent choose things, permanents entering the graveyard from anywhere, interacting with your opponent or their cards, or exiling cards from your graveyard to pay a cost) can feel incomprehensible and overwhelming at times. There's a reason "whenever you cast a noncreature spell" has bever been erattaed to "whenever you exhibit your prowess"
Thanks for reading! Have a great day.

The reasons for the vocabulary increase in the type of effects you’re talking about is the result of solving a core problem. Commander has become the most played tabletop format. In order to hit a threshold that a theme is playable in Commander, it has to appear on more cards than can possibly fit in a single set. In fact, more that can fit in three sets (so even a return to blocks wouldn’t solve this problem.) The solution is to play into themes that are backwards compatible. At first, we just hit upon themes that Magic has been doing a long time (caring about card types, graveyard, typal, etc.). Eventually, though we start to both exhaust those and start to feel to repetitive. One of our solutions was discovered in Dominaria with historic. What we call batching. If we combo existing things, but in a flavorful combination, we create new backward compatible themes that haven’t yet been the core of decks. Yeah, you’ve made artifact decks and legendary decks, but none with those two effects, plus Sagas, combined. In order for batching to work, we need to give it a flavor to hold it together, and that requires vocabulary. The flavor also helps the mechanic feel organic to the set it’s in. In short, player preferences create new design challenges, and this trend is one of the things design is doing to meet those challenges.

I know this isnt your department but I want to give an example of the kind of small powercreep that bothers me. For a while almost every set has had a common 1B 1/1 that makes your opponent discard a card when it ETBs. It's always a solid role player in limited, and somtimes is one of the best black commons. The last two sets have had that same design, but instead of discarding, it now exiles a card. Why is a strict upgrade on an already good enough card necessary?

Because collect evidence was in the set, discarding can help your opponent, so we exile to avoid that.

Do you think the choice of mechanic names for MKM was too specific for it to get reused? Like, Collect Evidence N could've just been Collect N, and I think Cases should've been called Mysteries, that way you can also use them for paranormal investigations on Innistrad or something.

There’s a balance between trying to maximize the mechanic for the set it’s in versus the future. Cases is narrow enough a space, that I don’t think limiting the name is an issue. Collect Evidence is a broader mechanic. I’m not sure the name can’t work elsewhere, but if we regret either of those names long term it will be Collect Evidence.

What do you recommend a player who has mixed feelings about a new set? I am not sure about the disguise mechanic, I don't like collect evidence - since I like my graveyards. The Edh Precons have great reprints, but their themes are not necessarily to my liking. I guess, it's the first set, I have to skip :/

I would recommend going to the prerelease to sample it. Sets sometimes play very differently than they appear. But if you’re just not feeling it for a specific set, that’s okay. Plenty more sets are on their way that may be more to your liking.

How is collect evidence different from delve

It’s a keyword action that is neither tied to a spell being cast nor cost reduction. It also treats cards differently whereas every card is of equal value to delve.