So...... I love Rats and I love playing standard. I have a pet deck that I play when I don't care about winning, almost never, that is a standard rat tribal deck!! I was worried it would be competely unviable once Nashi, Nezumi prowler, and okiba reckoner gang left, but with Bloomburrow having Rats in it, I'm hoping I can pick up enough one drop Rat cards that can fill the open slots and some other Rat than can steal games like Nashi. The Rats staying in the format really want to be in an agro deck with some utiilty that can just steal games so any rat made for commander or more midrange doesn't help the deck be viable, unless there is a slew of new Rats that help fill out a different direction to VIABLY take the deck. Are there standard playable Rats in Bloomburrow? (I put on the restirction that all the cards have to be rat themed or removal, deck won't function without removal, so the pool of cards and directions to take the deck where you aren't actively trying to lose is a very small sliver of cards.)

The Rats are in blue/black, so the archetype is going to make sense for blue/black, which traditionally isn’t aggro.

Milling!

Just learned in a podcast you're somewhat the "father" of the mill mechanic!
Was sad there was no new tools for dimir mill in MH3, are there any incoming for mill decks (not self-mill) in Duskmourne? The mechanic would be fitting with the setting...
thanks!

I can’t talk to the future, but we will be doing more mill effects, even if I can’t say when or where.I should stress that I did not invent mill. Millstone, the first card to mill cards, was in Antiquities and was designed by the East Coast Playtesters (Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Dave Petty, and Chris Page) with help from Joel Mick.I was a champion of milling and made a lot of cards with it.

Did you consider racoon u/b (sly raccoon) rat r/b lizard r/g?

No. Lizard and Raccoon happen long after Rat was cemented in blue/black. Also, Raccoons are core green, so blue/black is odd for them.

Why was rats in bloomburrow u/b? This makes it difficult to combine with the red support for rats in wilds of eldraine.

Wilds of Eldraine and Bloomburrow had different needs, so we overlapped Rats in black allowing you to play black/red Rats, blue/black Rats, or blue/black/red Rats.

What colors would a card that said destroy target permanent or counter target spell be?

White/blue/black or black/green/blue.

Happy birthday, Mark! I got into Magic with New Phyrexia's Intro deck, but Dark Ascension was the first new set I was around for. I remember for our first few games my brother thought Llanowar Elves searched the deck for a forest each turn. You can imagine I lost more often than not. Dimir is still my favourite color combo from that. Now I'm lucky enough to play magic with my partner of 9 years (today's our anniversary) and two of my dnd friends, and it's been a constant in my life

: )

Hey mark. Y’all in R&D infamously “avoid doing two-colour creatures which could be done in a single color”, like a creature with flying and vigilance, for example. I am not rehashing that argument, because I fully understand why the answer to that question is GB (although since vigilance is allowed in blue now that means that the UB option that was wrong at the time now is also a correct answer). That said, I do have some qualms with the premise of that question. We see multicolored cards that don’t need all their colors CONSTANTLY. Just in Thunder Junction, we got:- Wylie duke, which can be in white or green, and doesn’t need to be both- Vraska joins up, which can be done in mono green and doesn’t need black- Selvala, which can be done in mono green and doesn’t need white- Seraphic steed, which can be done in mono white and doesn’t need green- Rakdos joins up, which could be done in mono black and doesn’t need red- Miriam, which could be done in mono green and doesn’t need white- Marchesa, who can be done in blue or black, and doesn’t need to be both, and DEFINITELY doesn’t need red- Lilah, who could be done in red or blue and doesn’t need to be both- Jasper flint, who can be done in Black or red and doesn’t need to be both- Jem, who could be done in mono blue and doesn’t need white- Form a posse, which could be done in red or white and doesn’t need to be both- Breeches, who can be done in mono red and doesn’t need blue- At knifepoint, which could be done in mono red and doesn’t need black- Obeka, which could be dimir or izzet and doesn’t need to be grixis- Vihaan, who could be done in boros and doesn’t need black- Kirri, which could be in mono green, and doesn’t need red or white- Yuma, which could be done in mono green (and maybe mono red?) but definitely doesn’t need white- Olivia, which could be boros or rakdos and doesn’t need to be mardu- Pest control, which could be mono white and doesn’t need blackI don’t really know what I’m asking, but I just wanted to bring up that unnecessary colors appear on multicolored spells VERY frequently; and I wanted to know if you have any thoughts about this.

That’s why I say “we try” and not “we always do”. When a multicolor card doesn’t have abilities of two colors, we’ll tag it in the Council of Colors pass, and the lead designer will see if hey can find an elegant solution. It’s not a mandatory thing though, as it’s hard to do without making cards extra wordy and clunky. Again, that’s why I say “we try” to do it as it’s something we do when we can, but often don’t do.

"Dakkon Blackblade is definitely a color pie break, right? Right?!?It’s a green ability on a white/blue/black card. : )"
This made me think of a related question. I know counting lands generally is core green, but is counting swamps still in pie for black? (ex: Nightmare, Mutilate, Cabal Coffers)

Yes, it’s still in pie for black.

“Q) If zones of the game such as hands, graveyards, libraries, ect were considered by the rules to be a little bit more like objects and thus be able to be targeted directly do you think that would that open up design space for y’all or limit it? A) It doesn’t open up much design space.”Interestingly, a library could be targeted for a time (See - Circu, Dimir Lobotomist), but the ability has since been errata’d to “target player’s library” on every card that did except Nerf War.

Un-cards definitely can (and have) targeted libraries. The main rules have moved away from it.

Midweek magic on arena gave us a temporary historic pauper queue. I wanted to try out a classic dimir control deck but could not find something crucial to control decks, namely, a boardwipe. What is holding design back to print weird weak boardwipes like Taste of Death or Aetherize at common?

One of our rules about common cards is we try not to make 2 for 1’s.