abzanhouseguest asked about cards that trigger off things being exiled. We already have a few! The War Doctor being probably the strongest example. A couple Eldrazi too. It's a very rare thing but you've done it before.

Fine point.

I like Planeschase but dislike Dr. Who. Mechanically, the Dr. Who product added some fun and interesting cards, but I skipped it because of the IP. How well did it do and is there a chance of getting more in-universe Planeschase?

The feedback on March of the Machine Commander decks and the Doctor Who Commander didn’t have the planechase element listed as high points of the set for players.

Are there any franchises which are off limits for a UB set? (not for flavour reasons, but due to WotC/franchise policy)

In this article, I walk through how we figure out if a property would make a good Magic set.

The Challenges of Making Universes Beyond

Here is a story.For a while I was the only level 2 judge in central Connecticut and I would at a local store occasional run deck clinics that included how to play for newer players/ less experienced players usually one or two players would show up unless there was a qualifying tournament comming up. I remember having to explain to one person that Llanowar Elves do not tap to fetch Forests out of your deck or Dark Ritual gets three Swamps. They said its how they played at school. So long story short, I got them down on the rules, and helped with deck construction (it was an elf deck so I helped. The next weekend I had 11 people all from the school show up wanting help with their decks. As it turns out cutting a deck from 100 cards and 20 lands to 60 with 23 and giving a deck some focus made his deck unbeatable lol... and this continued for nearly a month. There were like locust abd bought out nearly every card from the stores binders all trying to one up eachother. A few years later I was judging side events at Protour Boston and one of those kids, was playing in the Protour and found me and thanked me it turned out he was really bad a math but when teaching him about his deck I helped him find the fun in it. A couple decades later I meet him again as he is now a doctor in the Emergency room (I was visiting my aunt who worked there). Its amazing how little things, like effort, spending some time, mentoring or even just listening can ripple out to be big things that help many other people. And Magic was a catalyst for it.

Thanks for sharing that story.

Hello!

Last time I wrote, I asked about Planar Chaos, and whether design might go back to something like that with the color pie. Thank you for your response. I can appreciate how it was a novel idea back then, but you do it more now in small ways over time.

My next question also has to do with color.

Like a lot of people, I love commander. I've created a challenge for myself. I'm trying to build a deck in every color combination.

I finally finished colorless, which was a challenge I've been afraid of since I started playing in Alara. Now I'm looking at four color commanders.

I have Omnath. I love Omnath. Landfall's been a favorite, since Zendikar is close to my heart.

And oh. There's Atraxa. Atraxa excites me. I think I'll focus her on poison counters.

But then there's the other combinations. After the Nephilim in Guildpact, most call them Glint, (no white) Dune, (no blue) and Witch (no red).

I see Breya, Saskia, and Yidris. They're awesome cards, and Yidris excites me somewhat. But it feels like a very tiny box that's been built many, many times before.

And those three cards are really it for those three color groupings. There's a whole bunch of representation for WURG especially with Doctor Who UB, and WUBG has the two Atraxa. But the other three don't get much.

Partner is an option I've considered. But at a glance, it seems a bit forced.

Do you think design will do more with the quad-color groupings? Would a set like Alara or Tarkir be possible, but with quad-color tribes? Or does that overcomplicate design too much?

Four-color legendary cards are in a weird place. We don’t want to make them such that people are just using them to play more colors in Commander, so it means we have to be very focused in what they’re doing, and finding a home for such a design is tricky.

Hypothetically, If you wanted to print cards mechanically identical to the Doctor Cards, what creature types would you use?

That hasn’t been decided yet.

I bought the Doctor Who decks because my son is a fan, and we played. They're high complexity, but once we learned then, they were fun and every bit as much Magic as any other Magic we've played before. To us, Magic is the rules system; the aesthetic changes constantly even for UW cards. In fact, when we play other games with less clear rules, we'll often say "well, in Magic it would work like this..."

Glad you and your son enjoyed them.

hi mark, i’ve noticed most ub commander decks have a clear split between factions (40k, lotr), eras of time (doctor who), or general archetypes (fallout). any advice for how to make splits for ips with less obvious delineations?

You’ll see as we do them. : )

Wanted to post some feedback for the fallout deck team, using the dr who decks as a basis. Obviously when designing commander decks it’s not possible to have every colour combination accounted for, but something the dr who decks did that I feel would have benefited the fallout decks, is the use of companions with the dr cards to allow for more options here, and with fallout having companions too, I feel there was a missed trick here somewhere.

Partner with isn’t something we can use a lot. Plus, when we do use it, it needs to be a flavor slam dunk, which it was with Doctor Who.

Hi Mark,
Is it possible to reduce the variety of rare lands that come out of Commanders of the same set?
I bought the Doctor Who Collector Booster Box that is full of them and this inhibits me from buying the Fallout collector booster box, because I would find the same lands (too many) of the Doctor Who edition with different art, instead of the new cards created ad hoc.
50 rare lands are an obstacle that will stop me from buying the next UB collectors too. Is there a way to drastically reduce this number? Thanks

Land design is one of the most restricted veins. In addition, there is a lot of demand for more printings of certain lands. Those two factors combined push us doing more repeat lands in Commander products.