“I’m not sure Wizards of Oz is in the public domain.” L. Frank Baum’s original Oz novels were all published between 1900 and 1920, and are therefore in the public domain. The iconic 1939 film starring Judy Garland is still under copyright. You can make new adaptations of the Oz novels for free, but if you start borrowing elements introduced in the movie, it starts getting dicey (or expensive) fast.

FYI

Hi Mark,

I'm really excited for for MH3 and the new commander decks coming out and from what I can see they look like a ton of fun. Please pass along that message to decks' designers.Now I know that the official Magic website is far outside your domain but the fact that I can't go to the official source to SEE the cards in the full decklists and need to go to third party sites to get all that info seems like a major oversight. The cards are available in the official card image gallery but aren't available with the decklists. Do you know if this is something being worked on? It's been an issue for quite a while now. There's no real reason we should be going offsite for this info.Anyway I'm excited for MH3 and the commander decks, I was just hoping my comment could push that up the list of priorities for those that take care of the site. It would make deciding on what deck to preorder much easier (look at the decklists, then use the onsite store locator to find a place near me I can purchase the deck from).

I’ll pass along the note.

In prep for your upcoming Rabiah scale article, I wanted to give mad props to whoever decided on putting a Rabiah reference in Dominaria United! My question: Has Rabiah been pitched as a setting following the success of Neon Dynasty? Such references seem like a good sign of Magic’s willingness to acknowledge it.

Rabiah’s biggest issue is it’s based on an outside property (one in public domain) and was done at a time where very little world building was done by Wizards. If we wanted to redo it, it’s not far away from doing a brand new world. There’s very little to salvage.

Why do a few cards from older sets have bible verses? Was it a response to the "satanic panic" of the nineties? Retrospectively, I just find it funny.

Early Magic used quotes from sources in the public domain for flavor text.

You may not be able to answer this but why wasn’t domain matters chosen for the five color commander deck’s theme in DMU? It seems the deck focuses on more of a colors matter theme rather than domain which was the main set’s choice for multicolored theme.

I had nothing to do with the design of the decks, so this is my best guess. There might not have been enough domain cards to make a domain-focused deck (and by “enough” I mean that worked well in the deck).

If public domain properties are usable, is Arabian Nights technically the first Universes Beyond set?

Yes, in the sense it’s an outside property, no in that branding didn’t exist yet.

There seems to be a staunch lack of mass nonbasic hate in standard & pioneer. Targeted land removal like demolition field, field of ruin, or Boseiju are good for dealing with individually powerful lands; but they don’t meaningfully punish greedy mana bases. Domain has been a tier 1 standard deck since DMU came out, and it’s only ever gotten more options. 4 color omnath dominated standard when it was legal, and multicolor decks in general have access to tons of fixing just with the land-base. Modern at least has blood moon, but standard and pioneer don’t have any mass nonbasic hate. Is this intentional? If so, why?

Hating on greedy mana bases, but not messing up non-greedy mana bases is a challenge.

I was noodling around with adding some Domain cards to my cube. When I searched for the word on Gatherer it showed me a bunch of cards that have never had the word "Domain" printed on them, but still counted the number of basic land types. Please give a high-five to whoever decided to put the term in those cards' oracle texts. It makes the database MUCH more useful.

Will do. Domain as an ability word didn’t happen until we brought the mechanic back.

If or When: Domain going to 6 without Barry's Land

If.

Any reason wastes aren't their own type? They're the only basic out of the 6 that myriad landscape can't ramp with.

It causes headaches with the tournament rules and play design issues with domain, so we chose not to do it.