Do you think mechanic for the seasons being paw prints limits their future use? As in, if pawprints are a smash hit and people adore this mechanic, don’t you think that being a PAWPRINT limits the ability the mechanic to return? It has pretty strict flavor

We can do similar cards with different symbols

Gotta admit some disappointment with part of the bloomburrow preview. It was really cool seeing the counters in set list until the set dropped and it became “two of these are evergreen, two are ability counters which are deciduous, one is flood which has appeared on and off for two decades…and the ones new to the set are actually all just flavorfully named charge or verse counters in how they work if it’s just one-off cards building on themselves for an effect to count.” Which is super disappointing as it feels like if new counters are named they should mean something

I list counters a lot of the time, and it’s mostly for flavor. The majority of Magic sets have existing evergreen counters (like +1/+1), sometimes deciduous ones (like flying), and usually a few new ones that are charge counters with added flavor. Usually, if there’s some new functionality, that’s it’s own bullet point.

Mr Mark, what is the lore / biology of the Clamfolk? I would really like to know, due to wanting to make a Clamfolk race in D&D 5e.

There isn’t much established lore save a few pieces of flavor text. Some Clamfolk live in Clamville. One Clamfolk village got shelled. There are Clamfolk musicians who play “Duke of Pearl”. There are Clamfolk rebels.

The decision to define the animal "super-batch" by real-world animals seems very strange to me. I suppose it works on Bloomburrow (because you'd separately decided to make all the Bloomburrow animals "real" animals) but it doesn't make a lot of flavor sense. A resident of Ravnica, for instance, doesn't know that a boar is a "real" animal but an indrik is not. They think of them both as part of the natural order.Was it ever considered to define the animal batch by what people in-universe would think of as "animals", i.e., including mythological and fictional animals but excluding sapients and the other categories on your list?

The concern was what was intuitive to the people actually playing the game, not what fictional character might think.

The highest of fives to the card designer, illustrator, flavor text author and everyone responsible for Flubs, the Fool. Probably my all time favorite magic card, Vorthos and Melvin had a child! Please, if there is no lore written on Flubs, keep it that way. He is perfect this way.

High fives to be applied.

Did you contemplate at some point giving the Thunder Junction Mercenaries... Exalted? I mean the name of the ability is wrong for the flavor, but mechanically it's driving at a similar thing to the tap ability you ended up giving them.

The first version we tried for Mercenary tokens is what we printed.

Is there a flavor reason why the MH3 flip walkers return to the owner's control and not the control of the person who flipped them?

I think it’s how the rules work. A new card (as far as the game is concerned) that hasn’t entered the game yet doesn’t have a controller.Someone better versed in the rules could explain the nitty gritty.

If/when Angels without flying?

If. It needs a strong flavor reason.

Apparently losing your wings wasn’t enough. : )

Before my birthday is over, I would love to invoke my right of trivia!Anything about my favorite part of Magic's world, the Love Song of Night and Day? Or if not, Mirage in general? (I fell in love with Magic when I found my parents' old collection of Mirage and 4th Edition, making me probably the youngest grumpy old magic player to ever shake their fist at these new confangled planeswalker cards)

The Love Song of Night and Day was a poem written by Jenny Scott when she was an editor on Magic. Pieces of it were used on flavor text in Mirage block. I would later read the poem at a wedding at a Magic Grand Prix. We would also eventually making a Saga that referenced it.Happy Birthday!

Has there ever been any thought to combining the Ox and Minotaur creature types? Such as simplifying both to simply "Cow?" I'm a huge fan of bovines in all forms and it would be nice if all of the Ox in magic worked alongside their more anthropomorphic cousins the Minotaur. As it is now we're lucky to really get cards of *either* type printed. There's resonance to the name Minotaur, no doubt, but it also has its share of baggage. It has Greek connotations and that's probably a big reason Minotaurs are almost strictly in Theros (although some favorites, such as Neheb, are from other planes). I was happy that Outlaws had more Ox cards, but it also highlights my dissatisfaction: Holy Cow is an *ox* not a cow, despite the name. It feels like a retread of the Hound or Naga debacle all over again. Hound was simplified to Dog and all Snakes, from rattlesnakes to Naga, are simply the type Snake now. This allows snakes and dogs of all walks benefit from a shared unity. Cats had it right, we didn't need Leonin as a separate type.I just feel like there's unnecessary separation being created by dividing Ox and Minotaur and it has the same resonance failings as all dogs being labeled "hounds" had. If it's important for a particular creature to *be* a minotaur then they can just *have* minotaur in their name, like ~30% of minotaurs already do. There's also the simple fact that Minotaur is a longer average creature type, limiting design space for other types to be included. It's hard to justify why a Minotaur is on a random plane, but much less so if it's simply a "Cow Warrior" for example. As for why I think "Cow" should just be the combined type name, I simply think it fits. Cow is a resonant name. Almost everyone, East to west, knows *of* cows if only because their milk is such a widely used commodity. We don't call it "Ox's milk" after all. More than that, it's fun! Cow is *funny* in the same way *squirrel* is funny. It's amusing to see "Squirrels you control" in this game full of fighting. In that vein, "Cows you control" is an amusing line that can help break up the seriousness of a setting. I know this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but magic is a game of different perspectives coming together and creating something new. Cows are my favorite animal and it's simply dissatisfying, to me, that my Holy Cow can't benefit from a Kragma Warcaller. That Angrath, colloquially named "Cow Dad" in the community, would have the creature type "Minotaur." The only downside I can see is that "Cow" *does* specifically refer to females of a bovine species. But that is a distinction few, if any, seriously take into consideration. If one sees a field of cows, they're not saying "I see lots of cows and 3 bulls!" They're going to say "I see cows!"So to bring the thesis back, has there been any discussion internally to simplifying the Minotaur and Ox creature types under a single banner, such as "Cow?" I would also happily settle for "Cattle" as the new type. I just feel the current Ox vs Minotaur divide has to go, for both flavor and mechanical reasons, and the sooner the better.

I have been on Team Cow (as I was on Team Dog) for many years. I even made Cows in Un-sets. I still believe Minotaur should be its own creature type though.