Why people want new keywords so much? When I was a new player the thing I got more trouble understanding was which keywords did what. I printed a cheat sheet with the evergreen ones but it took me months to memorize them. A card with a full paragraph was usually easier to understand than keyword soup cards that had only one line with 3 keywords.

I think many enfranchised players don’t realize the true barrier of a lot of vocabulary words to newer players, as there was just a lot less evergreen vocabulary words when they entered the game.

Is there a reason Gift wasn't formatted like Ward to remain a generic keyword? It seems like the kind of keyword that could become evergreen if it wasn't specifically tied to hardcoded options like "Gift a tapped fish." For example:Gift - Draw a card (As you cast this spell, you may choose an opponent. If you do, they draw a card before the rest of this spell's effects.)

We can say Gift a _________ a do whatever gift we like. It’s not very restricting.

Re: “battles aren’t evergreen”Will this always be the case? Like, once we get to fall of 2025 and we potentially start seeing battles again, will they not be evergreen? It seems incredibly strange to me that an entire card type would not be evergreen. Kindred at least has the fact that its existence was a mistake, but battles not being evergreen feels like saying that planeswalkers or artifacts won’t be in every set.

Evergreen means every set wants access to it, and battles simply don’t fit that requirement. Just because things have been a certain way doesn’t mean it always will be. I don’t expect us to design new card types very often, but there’s no obligation that they have to be evergreen if we do. Odds are, by the nature of how card types work, they won’t be.

If/When: Deciduous colorless enchantment spells?

Colorless is already deciduous. And enchantments are evergreen. So, I think it will happen. I’m not sure it will become a regular thing, but who know?

Will Battles become deciduous/evergreen or are they more of a thing saved for the big story event sets?

Battles are deciduous. We’re not quite to the sets yet where we got the feedback from March of the Machine that people liked them. Remember we work two years ahead. Also, deciduous means we use them where they make sense.

How high is the hurdle to overcome before requesting the editing? team to design a new mana symbol(like say diamond phyrexian mana or snow/twobrid mana) ? A big part of the set? A small part of the set? a single very high profile card? Just a card development thinks is important for a format to print even if not high profile?

New symbols have a very high bar, especially evergreen ones.

If/when: a future mechanic or card type or tool that immediately becomes evergreen the way equipment did.

I assume when, but it will happen more infrequently over time as there is less simple space to explore.

There are some evergreen mechanics. Are there everwhite, everblue, everblack, or everred ones?

There are not. Another example of the game’s inherent bias towards green. : )

In Gavin Verhey's GMM from a week ago, he talks about the difficulty of adding combat keywords into blue. Is there something preventing Skulk from being more prevalent?

Yeah, it’s harder to process and has less design space that we initially imagined. The mechanic was designed with the idea that it might become evergreen, but it didn’t work out.

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.