Hi Mark. I love Bloomburrow's design from veteran perspective! It's such a novel way to do a 10 color pair faction set. However, from a new player's perspective, I hope it won't be too overwhelming since the mechanics so far spoiled include Landfall, Storm, Flashback, Threshold, Gift, Offspring, Expend, Prowess, Forage, Food/Treasure, Valiant, 10 Typal themes, Pawprints, and Classes. Was there concern about complexity creep or do you think the 10 typal motif will facilitate learning the mechanics in the set (I'm not sure what you would call this phenomenon where, counterintuitively, adding more complexity simplifies cognitive processing, like adding hyphens to phone numbers)?

Most of the mechanics are put into a specific animal two-color pair, so you don’t end up playing the majority of these mechanics together. They are also on the simpler end of the spectrum.

Are the two mechanics from the same set returning as faction mechanics Threshold and Flashback?

Yep.

Hello Mark. Why sorcery speed for plot ? Would you mind giving us more details than ‘it played better’ ? Thanks !

If plot cards were instants, they’d always be on, meaning the opponent would have to be on guard at all times. By making them sorceries, we make them easier to monitor and reduce the complexity of tracking them. In addition, we have to cost cards for their strongest use, so making them instants would make us have to cost them more, which means they became less viable unless you’re taking advantage of them being instants.Finally, we want to be careful of people getting caught unaware by public knowledge, as it can be very frustrating. It’s why most flashback cards are cast from the graveyard at “sorcery speed”.

Does the flavor baggage of embalm make a finality counter version of "creature flashback" more likely?

Yes, I guess.

Hey Mark! Spree is probably one of my favorite mechanics ever, but I feel it was a bit unexploited.Can we expect to see variations on spree, such as a permanent with spree, a spree cost of a different color than the original spell, a spree cost that's not mana at all, or a spree spell with flashback or kicker?

I am optimistic we will make more spree cards.

Hello Mark. You said (I believe on a podcast) that you decided to not use flashback on stryxhaven because it was going to be used on Midnight Hunt. With the current philosophy, would you be seeing this as an opportunity to repeat a mechanic in 2 close by sets?

I wanted it in both sets (Strixhaven was handed from vision design with flashback in it), but was in the minority and it got changed.

Embalm and escape are no different than unearth or flashback. What flavorful word you drop in for a particular alternate casting cost or activated ability doesn't change the structure of how the ability is written. Commit a crime and collect evidence are uniquely templated and warp the text box around them. They stick out like a sore thumb compared to every other keyword

But they aren’t uniquely templated. Collect evidence, as an example, is templated like any other mechanic that uses the graveyard as a resource.

If or When : a set with only Kicker, Cycling, Transform, Landfall and Flashback? 😇

If. We tend to like to do new things, especially in premier sets, but it would be easy to execute on.

Caverns of Ixalan has Craft a "Graveyard as a resource" mechanic like Flashback & Scavenge and Descend, a "graveyard as a measure" mechanic like threshold and undergrowth. From what I can tell a graveyard had set has always been built around one or the other because the themes clash. Why does Caverns mix the two? Thanks for answering our questions, sir.

Both mechanics work with things that fill your graveyard, so there is some synergy, even if there’s also some tension.

Hey Mark, it's been a long time since my last ask here! Can you tell us if there's a chance we'll see cards refering to events that happened during the Phyrexian Invasion on future sets, like a flashback to past events?

I can say the Phyrexian Invasion will have a lot of influence on the story and worlds going forward.