In the Fallen Empires DTW (which I loved by the way), you mention that Fallen Empires had almost no flying or other evasion. Do you think that might have been the result of building the set “too top down,” meaning they had great ideas about the factions and simply forgot to include evasive creatures because the factions they came up with were all land and sea armies? This feels like a good lesson that could be useful to anyone designing a set without a design skeleton.

The East Coast Playtesters just weren’t super fond of flying. Most their sets had a smaller percentage of fliers than average (at the time).

Has a reflavored/variant of Frenzy been considered as the mythical Izzet evergreen keyword? The aggression feels red and the synergy with evasion seems like it makes for a nice overlap in blue.

Play design is not a fan of frenzy. Every time I’ve talked about adding it to a set, they recommend against it.

Is the Resilient Roadrunner evasion (also seen on Gingerbrute) something that R&D is warming up on? It's kind of charming to me, like a hidden Flying variant.

It’s a tool to represent speed that we’ll use when appropriate.

re: menace in blue, I didn't mean to imply that blue should take menace away from black, I just think that menace could fit pretty well in blue.

Blue doesn’t really need more evasion, and as I say in another post, I don’t think evasion is the key to solving the blue/red keyword overlap issue.

When we see an evergreen keyword stop being printed, we normally have a replacement (hexproof instead of shroud) or at least something that fills the gap (menace giving evasion to black/red instead of fear, activated indestructible for regeneration). Would you ever just remove something evergreen? Like, something that isn't worth doing anymore, without need for a replacement.

We have in the past. Banding went away and nothing like it became evergreen. I think us doing something today is a little less likely, but not impossible.

Mark, this is something of a debate in the community so I thought to ask for your opinion: do you, or R&D as a whole, consider trample to be a form of evasion?

It is thought of as partial evasion.

I'm not thrilled at all with the few reveals of the new Xalan set. The power creep is unreal. It seems like it's not even baby steps anymore, but leaps and bounds. The more it creeps, more cards will be completely invalidated and the game will get quicker. Soon, the only thing that will matter is going first. I remember when the "vanilla test" was actually a thing. It felt like a gold standard of evaluating cards, and it worked well. We're long past that. We're getting 7 and 8 mana, 12/12 creatures with insane upside and evasion on the regular now. I wish we could bring back that "vanilla test" standard, but once a stage of power creep has been attained, non-rotating formats can't go back. It'll forever be stained with the negative affects of power creep.

I think you are misjudging the power level of the new cards. Let’s wait and see how they actually impact formats. Also, the game being too quick and seven and eight mana cards being too powerful seem to contradict one another.

I just wanted to praise the people responsible for the changes to MTGO Commander draft format (1 game instead of 3, shorter clock) as well as the people responsible for the Commander Masters set design. This felt like a real game of Commander. I was able to ramp into Maelstrom Wanderer on turn 4, but the rest of the table was able to adjust, and there were enough powerful plays to keep it compelling and enough evasion and card draw to prevent it from dragging. Excellent job!

I’ll pass along the kind words.

There you go!I'll list a whole bunch of abilities and you list whether or not it's an evasion ability:a) bandingb) can only be blocked by creatures of the same colorc) can't be blocked unless the opponent pays 1d) creatures you control have flyinge) deathtouchf) first strike g) flankingh) if you have a creature with flying in your graveyard, this creature has flyingi) menacej) protection from red k) shadowl) skulkm) tramplen) 1: target creature can't block this turn o) 1: target creature can't block this creature this turnp) 1: this creature can't be blocked this turnq) when this creature attacks, it gains flying until end of turn r) when this creature attacks, chose one - it gains flying until end of turn or it gains vigilance until end of turns) when this creature attacks, tap all creatures controlled by opponentst) when this creature enters the battlefield, target creature gains flying

Here’s my best guess at the answers:A - noB - yesC - I think so but I’m not sure. That creates a blocking restriction but I don’t know that it “restricts what creatures can block” the attacker. It restricts all of them unless the condition is met, but it has nothing to do with the creatures themselves. D - The resulting flying is an evasion ability. I don’t know if the ability that grants the evasion ability is itself an evasion ability. I’d say no. E - noF - noG - noH - see DI - yesJ - yesK - yesL - yesM - noN - the Comp Rules are ambiguous. 509.1b says only static abilities can be evasion abilities, so any activated ability is an automatic no. The glossary definition doesn’t have that stipulation, so I think it’d be a yes we go by that. O - see NP - see NQ - see D; flying is but I think the ability that grants flying isn’t. Also, the 509.1b definition rules out all triggered abilities, though the glossary definition doesn’t. R - see QS - noT - see Q

For the flying problem, was horsemanship ever considered? I imagine that it might have the opposite problem, that many characters who ride horses don't want horsemanship.

Horsemanship doesn’t do a great job of capturing the flavor of evasion.