Hi Mark! About creature types. You’ve said before R&D is skittish about errataing creature types, but there’s been a lot of doing that anyway lately. Apart from changing the types of animal-people like viashino and cephalid to better synergize with their non-anthropomorphic counterparts, sloth was added to a few cards with Fallout, and now dragons from Kaladesh received the cat type. Efreet was phased out in favor of djinn, but not retroactively like naga - all the efreet cards are still efreet, but there won’t be new ones anymore. And lastly, despite both types entering the game around the same time, sloth gets added, detective doesn’t. Arboreal Grazer went from beast to sloth beast, but Dogged Detective stays merely a human rogue.  I’m fully in favor of the general direction that’s taken with creature types, and I also understand the risk of doing a lot of this in a game with paper cards. But the way it’s currently being handled feels extremely inconsistent, and the categorizer in me feels upset!
So, my question is: could you, or someone who is in charge of this, elaborate on the seemingly complex reasonings as to which creature type gets added, added but not errata’d, replaced, or phased out (perhaps in an article)? You’ve said before it’s not, but it really does seem scattershot, and I want to understand.Thank you!

Here’s the problem. It’s mostly done piecemeal which creates the inconsistency you’re talking about. Let me bring it up with the relevant people.

I understand that there are things you can point to that are visible consequences of the Phyrexian invasion like story content and the deaths of Eldraine’s king and queen, but doesn’t it say something that you need to point those out as counter arguments to begin with?The problem with threatening a Phyrexian planar threat is that the damage was implied to be irreversible. Compleation often involved grotesque surgical mutilation, so it doesn’t make sense that compleated characters could return to normal so easily and without any significant scarring. Phyrexian oil is supposed to be so dangerous that a single drop could eventually infect and corrupt an entire plane, so it seems impossible to eradicate. Even ignoring the resilience of the Phyrexians themselves, a large scale military invasion aided by the most powerful beings on each plane should have left those planes in a post-apocalyptic state, yet all of that seems to be off-screen or completely disregarded. We went underground for Ixalan, so we didn’t see the devastation. We went into the wilds for Eldraine, so we didn’t see the courts in shambles. Ravnica seems to be the same as ever, just with more detective hats. And the last set of the year that immediately followed the invasion takes place on a plane nobody even lived on during the invasion, so there were no consequences to show off.I think the real issue isn’t necessarily that there weren’t consequences, but that you guys chose deliberately not to show them on cards, outside of the desparked planeswalkers and a few cards in Aftermath. As it is, it’s difficult to believe that the Phyrexian threat that was built up over decades could be so easily repelled AND completely defeated at the height of their power, but I would argue that the sets directly following the invasion should have all had a blatantly dark, somber, post-apocalyptic theme. Instead, we got a bunch of light hearted costume party sets that seemed chosen specifically to NOT show how much damage was done. I get that you want to have a tone shift after a darker year, but it just feels like instead of getting closure, we all just got whiplash instead. It would have been better to show a struggling multiverse slowly learning to rebuild before diving into the next big arc.

There’s a big difference between did big things happen and do we need to focus on them? For the Vorthoses who read the stories, the Phyrexian War had huge consequences for many worlds. From a game standpoint, it changed how we used a whole card type and allowed us to make sets we couldn’t make before. The impact of the events of March of the Machine on flavor and mechanics was major.The reason we didn’t focus on the outcomes on the cards and have a year of dreary sets is we strongly believed the majority of the players didn’t want that.

Also, I wanted to call out the previous asker's reference to "pre-MKM Ravnica". Does it seem to anyone else that some people simply don't understand that MKM was a set that was focused on a particular slice of Ravnica: detectives and crimes? To hear these people tell it, one might think that every creature on Ravnica is now born wearing a fedora, rather than their abundance in MKM merely being a logical result of the focus of the set.

Yes, it was a focus of a part of Ravnica, much like War of the Spark was focused on an event that occurred on Ravnica.

"Are we likely to see an errata for creatures flavored as sleuths/investigators to being detective in their creature type? (...)There is not currently plans to do that."I understand there's a limit to how much errata you're willing to do, but why did Sloths get it but Detectives won't? It seems quite random. I assume there's some thought behind it, so I'm curious about the reasoning. Thanks!

It’s not random. It isn’t tied to how many typal rewards exist though which is what players, like yourself, seem to prefer.

From a design perspective, I think the pulpy-noir take of MKM would have aesthetically meshed better with New Capenna and its art deco style. I also think it would make sense to have a bunch of private detectives suddenly appear, as on Ravnica the Azorius and Boros seem to have law under control, but on Capenna people might need to hire someone independent of “the system” now that some of the crime families have been hit hard. From a player perspective, Ravnica is engrained in people’s heads and you don’t have that issue on Capenna where we’ve only had one set.

A lot of these notes seem to imply, why didn’t you think of New Capenna? We did. We explored New Capenna. It didn’t fit. It didn’t have components we needed. It didn’t have enough known characters. It required explanation that we didn’t have space to explain. And on top of all that, New Capenna, as a setting, just wasn’t all that popular with the players.

For what it's worth I love MKM and for me Ravnica sets were beginning to feel a bit repetetive, and here I have some boros cards, or cards that feel boros or fit in boros decks, while the set itself has a brand new detective theme. I would love you to continue this way of going back to sets, especially the more used ones.

The trick is getting enough of the feel into the world while using a new mechanical theme.

Hey Mark,I know errata is tricky and there are lots of reasons not to go back and re-type old creatures. I just wanted to throw in my two cents that Dogged Detective not being a detective drvies me *crazy.* It's in his name! And he was reprinted in a commander deck for *this set*!Once again, I respect the complicated balancing game your decisions are made within. Just wanted to share my feedback

It is a common request.

So, a trend I've been noticing is introducing/reintroducing a creature type or mechanic in a UB set, and then the following UW set also incorporating that design space (ie Doctor Who introducing Detective, following with MKM Detectives, LOTR reintroducing Food tokens and then WOE giving more Food related cards)Is this an intended effect and/or will we see a similar correlation with PIP and OTJ or ACR and BLB?

I believe Murders at Karlov Manor used Detective first, and Doctor Who then added it.

Just curious, did detective tokens ever do anything detective-y? Such as, blocking suspected creatures as though they weren’t suspected?

Not that I know of. We tend to limit how much text we put on the tokens.

People are always asking you for trivia, so I thought I’d give you some instead in case you didn’t know about it. We got a new legendary bear in the Karlov Manor Commander product, which ties into the main set’s theme of detectives because a group of bears is sometimes called a sleuth!

: )