It occurred to me during your last DtW I've never heard you discuss Elementals in your search for a green iconic. Force of Nature is undoubtedly the biggest, greenest creature in Alpha, and feels a lot like green's Lord of the PIt. WotC also kept printing splashy rare "nature elementals" in similar trope space like Verdant Force, Child of Gaea, Thorn Elemental, and Maro yourself, as if they were resonant with players. Were the lower-rarity red and blue elementals the problem, or something else?

We do Elements in all five colors, which isn’t good for an iconic creature type.

Hey Mark! My birthday was yesterday, and I was wondering if you had any trivia about one mana value cards over the years?? (I have a One Drop Cube!)

Phyrexian Dreadnought (Mirage)This card came about because I wanted to add a 12/12 to Magic. You see, Alpha had an 8/8 in Force of Nature. Antiquities had a 9/9 in Colossus of Sardia. The Dark then got a 10/10 in Leviathan. Followed up by the 11/11 Polar Kraken in Ice Age. This seemed like a fun game that I wanted to continue playing. Bill Rose, now Vice President of R&D, was the lead designer of Mirage. He said he would add it if I could design a cool enough card. The next day I returned and said, “Is a 12/12 trampler for 1 cool enough?”Happy Birthday!

Hi. I think my birthday trivia question got lost in all the Strixhaven hype. Do you have any trivia on the time spiral slivers in honor of my first deck ages ago? If you have exhausted that topic already how about trivia about Force of Nature, my favorite card when I first started playing as a kid.

When printed in Alpha, Force of Nature was the creature in the game with the highest power and toughness. This led to a little game in R&D where we kept 1 upping ourselves making a creature +1/+1 bigger. Happy Belated Birthday!

It's hard to say Nahiri is a villain in anything in but the most absolute terms. As a hypothetical example, if there was an asteroid heading toward the earth and we magically shunted it aside somehow, but doing so caused the asteroid to hit a different populated planet, are we (humankind) villains? Defending yourself from an overwhelming force of nature is hardly villainous, even if your actions potentially lead to others being hurt by said force of nature.

She lured Emrakul to Innistrad specifically to harm the inhabitants. There’s no moral high ground.

You said today that the element air is blue while the weather is green, but a while back when somebody brought up Wall of Ice you said that it should have been a blue card since blue is the color of water and ice. Clearly, though, glaciers are a force of nature and a product of climate and weather and natural forces, and so what you said today is more correct. Thus, not counting the "no untap" rider, it's cards like Wall of Frost that are in the wrong color--not Wall of Ice. Aha! =P

Walk of Ice is a wall of frozen water. Blue is the color of water and cold. It should be Blue.

I noticed that in the sample decks, you guys used 4 of the 5 big iconic creatures from alpha- serra, sengir, mahamoti, and shivan. What happened to poor ol' force of nature?

Upkeep cost which is not something we want in a sample deck.