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.

Sorry for nitpicking, but I think the Pinnacle Monk creature depicts an efreet and not a djinn like the type line and flavor text say, is that a mistake or are Djinns and Efreets being fused into a single creature type? Thanks.

We’re no longer going to be using Efreet, so cards like Pinnacle Monk are likely to show up as Djinn’s going forward.

Hi Mark! I really wanted to say I really like the appearance of people from throughout the multiverse in the set, including non legendaries like Djinn of Fool's Fall ( a Tarkir Djinn), Congregation Gryff (an Innistrad Gryff), Deepmuck Desperado (Homarid from Dominaria), Gold Rush (which shows an elf from Capenna) etc... This is exactly the type of things I wanted to see with the Omenpaths! I hope we get more cameos like this in future Omenpath centric sets :)

How do others feel about it?

Could the blue iconic creature be Djinn? I think they're more familiar in popular culture, and more versatile than Sphinx, and they're big and rare.

We tried it many years ago.

Could classic nigh-omniscient wish-granting Djinn ever work as an iconic blue creature? They fly, they’ve elementally blue, they’re humanoid but in a fantastical dimension, etc.

We tried it. It didn’t go well.

Haughty Djinn - It’s so strange to me to think a card gets tracked through design into different “versions” when the versions are *absolutely nothing* like one another. It’s the perfect example of the old “What’s difference between a bicycle? An orange. Because a vest has no sleeves.” Why even throw out the old versions instead of dumping them into a file of “abandon cards.” Is such a file kept and reviewed?

We do go back and use old designs all the time.

With all this talk of revisiting Rabiah or making a new Persian-inspired plane, just to be clear on how much Arabian Nights was inspired by the stories, how many cards in ARN are unique to Magic and how many are taken from/directly reference the stories?

The vast majority of it was based on actual stories. There’s a little of Richard extrapolating from the source material like with the Djinns and Efreets.

What colors are mono colored Djinns allowed to be currently?

Here’s my best guess:U >> B > R > G >> W

Hi Mark. About the reserved list, yeah that old chestnut. How does Ravenous Giant in Modern Horizons exist when it is *identical* to Juzam Djinn apart from being red rather than black?

It being a different color makes it not the same and thus the Reserved List does not apply.

Hi MaRo! Today is my birthday. My first starter deck came from Mirage, and one of the cards I remember playing with a lot was Needletooth Djinn. I was wondering if you had any trivia on it, or assuming not that specific card, any Djinn that came after Mahamoti Djinn? Thanks for all of your hard work!

I believe Nettletooth Djinn was us trying to make a properly costed Juzam Djinn in green. Interestingly, I think Juzam Djinn ended up being properly costed in modern creature costing and Nettletooth Djinn is a bit weak. Also, green doing damage as upkeep isn’t super green. Happy Birthday!