I’m personally fine with the shortening of “enters the battlefield” to just “enters”, it’s what I say out loud most of the time anyway, but wowza something feels super wrong reading “whenever a creature you control enters” and it not being worded as “whenever a creature enters under your control”. It gives me the same feeling as ordering water and getting carbonated strawberry milk, or taking a bite of a BLT and finding an entire uncut pickle inside. There’s literally nothing those two have in common with magic cards, I’m just using them to explain my level of discomfort and confusion. What led to this formatting change?

It allows us to use one less word (“you control” vs. “under your control”).

I'm so happy that "When Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward enters the battlefield" will now just be "When this card enters". It saves SO much space in card text and cleans up (IMO) Magic text boxes a fair bit. Can I ask what finally made the change happen? Also, why didn't the two changes (ETB and "Card Name") happen at the same time?

In templating, there often is a conflict between clarity and brevity. Also, we more often tend to take changes slowly as it’s easier if they’re more incremental.

Hi Mark! I'm curious about the reasons for changing "enters the battlefield" to just "enters". I feel like there are other similar wordings that you say wouldn't be worth shortening because it wouldn't save that much space. I don't mean this as a criticism. I'm just curious.

It’s a change we’ve talked about for a while. One playtest we decided to just try it, and no one noticed. So we decided it was a low impact way to lessen words.

Why is sharazad a sorcery instead of a creature with an ETB and Ward cost both of which make you play sub games when the latter is more accurate to her lore.

Enter the battlefield effects didn’t exist when Arabian Nights was published.

I gotta say, I am not a fan of the "once per turn" draw in White. It just doesn't have the same mechanical bite that other colors have like Red's impulse draw/rummaging or Black's sacrifice for power. Can we see more of a push in forms of White card draw that thematically fit, like charity (Secret Rendez-Vous), compensation (Discerning Financier), and retribution (Esper Sentinel) with less ETB card draw and "draw a card because you did something" (Wedding Announcement, Welcoming Vampire)?

The flavor is white draws long, that is it sets up the proper condition and then gets rewarded with card draw over time. It’s slow, methodical card draw.

Is "if you had a land enter the battlefield under your control this turn" still considered Landfall?

Landfall is “Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control,”.

Is there a mechanical reason why most cards (especially in MH3) that give Energy on ETB give 2 Energy instead of just 1?

I assume for game balance.

can a creature with ETB draw two be G/U hybrid?

I’m skeptical green would do that.

Today is my thirtieth birthday. To celebrate the milestone, may I have a piece of obscure trivia about either Magic’s thirtieth planeswalker type, Ugin, or Magic’s thirtieth set (counting Limited Edition as a single entry), Urza’s Destiny? Thank you for everything you and your team continue to do for the game and community.

Urza’s Destiny was the one expansion where I was the sole design team. It premiered the flicker ability which was inspired by self-phasing, but triggering ETB effects. I originally designed a vertical cycle in white, but it got cut down to a single rare (with the ability closest to my common design).

Could red get a creature with an etb trigger of "impulsive draw - you can cast the exiled card as long as this creature remains on the battlefield"?

We’re experimenting with having longer durations with impulsive draw, but we still want some amount of uncertainty. So, maybe. : )