Do you think we will stop seeing the word planeswalker on nonplaneswalker cards. For along time, removal had to also hit planeswalkers. Since there are now less planeswalkers does everything also need to target planeswalkers too all the time?

The word stays on the majority of the time for constructed reasons, but it might show up a little less on card more focused on limited.

Hey Mark! Its my birthday so im gonna get a little self indulgent with this one. Im a huge block constructed fan and have been building cubes to kind of fill the void that the current one set release schedule has made in that department. Based off player feedback is there any chance to going back to 2/3 set blocks being the norm like before?

The players, through the buying habits, have shown a large preference for individual sets versus blocks. We can still have consecutive sets on the same world when they make sense, but even those will still be drafted by themselves. With the current data, I am highly skeptical of blocks return.

As the number of creature type erratas grow, so do the number of cards that work differently than what is printed. Some cards exist currently with none of their printed creature types. For example, when the dog update came out, "leashling" went from golem to dog while its not relevant card to most constructed formats I'm sure there are plenty of others. This card functions differently than what is printed on the card. For what seems like no reason other than art looks like dog = now dog not a golem. I have zero qualms with the calling hounds dogs, but I do feel that cards should also, as often as possible, do what they say. My question is, is this not also an internal vision as well to maintain the integrity of what's printed on many players' cards?This opinion does not apply to erratas relating to cultural sensitivity changes.

Yes, our goal goal is to make cards function the way people intuitively expect. There are different factors that sometimes get in the way of that goal, but that is our vision.

"Innistrad is one of my best designs."Yeah, Innistrad was great when it was unique, and gothic horror is an incredibly deep well to draw from. There's tons of source material, and it's easy to make it feel "universal".These days, it feels like every premier set is trying to be Innistrad, unless it's a Storyline Set or a Return Set. The Innistrad-likes all feel like "Magic does [genre]" instead of something actually original, Storyline Sets are practically Return Sets, and the actual Return Sets are half Innistrad-likes anyway.The Modern Horizons sets are the last bastion of bottom-up, Magic doing Magic sets, but they're infrequent, expensive, and overshadowed by how they destroy the Modern metagame every time.I just want a new world that makes me feel like I'm reading the Planeswalker's Guide to Alara again. A world that only makes sense in Magic the Gathering, instead of Magic fitting itself into something that already exists.

I want to begin by stressing something. You’re talking to me, the Head Designer of Magic. I, along with rest of the designers, are in charge of the mechanical execution of design. We create the larger structure of how the set is build, weave in flavorful themes, and design mechanics to play into that structure and theme(s). When I talk about sets I’ve done I’m talking about the part of the process I’m in charge of. With that said, let’s talk about the latest design I led (vision design), Outlaws of Thunder Junction. I hold up its game design to any other set I’ve lead. The mechanics are sharp, useful, and lead towards new play patterns. The limited play and constructed play involving its themes are novel. And while it’s all forward facing, it was designed to be more backwards compatible than previous sets. Plot, in particular, is one of the most exciting new mechanics I’ve designed in a long time. It’s simple in description, but surprisingly deep in strategy. Having the primary focal point of villainy, with a secondary theme of the Western genre, led my team to create something new. Top-down is just an input. Good design can come from any input. Bottom-up design is no better at making good mechanic designs than top-down. I believe current mechanical design is on point, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction, in particular, is my team being on their A game.

I don't dislike outlaw, but I don't see how it makes sense as a single-set mechanic. For Limited, things would be a lot cleaner if you just added a new Outlaw creature type. For Constructed the backwards compatibility is useful, but a single set's worth of payoffs isn't enough to make it worth building around.
So I think batches like outlaw would work more effectively if you intend to use them regularly rather than as single-set mechanics which might possiblysee a return several years later.

For 4-of, 60-card formats, there are plenty of Outlaw mattering cards. You don’t need that many when using four copies.For 1-of, singleton formats, there are four legendary creatures that care about Outlaws.Both have 31 years of creatures of the five relevant creature types.

Well you could if you had an Anti [S] symbol create cards that require some amount of [S] and some amount of anti [S] thus making people in constructed format think about how many snow lands they bring rather than going all or nothing.

It’s an inelegant solution to the problem.

Why do we see so few cards that reward playing specific basic land types in Standard, such as Blanchwood Armor, Armored Ascension or Flow of Ideas? These seem like a slam dunk for encouraging monocolored decks in Constructed, something that we see less and less of as dual lands are released. Take the Darksteel Affinity for Land Type golems for instance: they solve the high mana value playability issue very well while asking for a meaningful commitment.

Those effects work best in uncommon, especially if that’s all they’re focused on. At uncommon, those cards are draft traps though if the set doesn’t support monocolor play. So, they’re not something we can just drop in most sets.

Everybody understands that in non-rotating formats old card will eventually get replaced by better or more synergistic new cards. That's not a problem. What upsets people is how fast and extreme that replacement has become.

Modern has gone from a format where you can play any card from 8th edition onwards to a format where you can play any card from War of the Spark onwards (with few hate cards in the sideboard from older sets).

Modern no longer feels like a format that draws from a significant part of magic's history - it feels like Extended + Modern Horizons/LOTR block constructed. And that change happened *very* fast.

That’s a result of making sets that rotate directly into Modern. It’s a combination of the higher power level (sets aimed at a Standard power level rotate at a slower rate into Modern) and designing cards specifically for the format (what we do when we design a set specifically for a format). I do hear from players that wish we didn’t design sets that rotated directly into Modern, but the fact that the top two selling sets of all time (The Lord of the Rings and Modern Horizons II, respectively) rotated into Modern does indicate a pretty big audience that wants it. That said, we have heard the complaints that the first two Modern Horizons were a bit too aggressive in displacing older cards, and Modern Horizons III is more aimed at enabling second tier decks rather than just making cards that are powerful in a vacuum.

With the recent banning of stickers and attractions, do you think there will ever be an extra deck mechanic targeted at competitive constructed?

Anytime in the near future, unlikely.

Mark, is the banning of acorn cards today finally a concession that acorn/un/silver border cards are a mistake?

No. I think it’s important for Magic to keep pushing boundaries and trying new things. Stickers and Attractions were a problem in Legacy constructed events, so we removed them from those events. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from players who are enjoying the cards in Commander.