"Which color(s) are the main one(s) for battle removal?Red and white usually have slightly more “combat tricks”. Green also always has a Giant Growth like effect that’s good in combat."I think this ask was about removing battles (the card type).

Red has direct damage, which removes battles. We haven’t chosen a color to destroy them.

I'm curious: will the rules for "committing a crime" allow for cards with wording like "whenever you commit a crime, you may copy that crime" and/or "counter target crime"?

You can care about a crime being committed, but spells aren’t crimes. It’s more of an act than a thing. For example, I cast Giant Growth. If I target my creature, I haven’t committed a crime, but if I target my opponent’s creature, it is a crime.

In a recent DTW, you mentioned that Cipher didn’t end up having much drain space because you couldn’t use combat-oriented effects after the damage was done (giant growth being your example). Did you consider Cipher to be (and I’m not 100% sure how the wording might be) something like “after blockers are declared and this creature remains unblocked”? That would have enabled pump spell effects and other effects like giving it double-strike, or even team-boosting “all creatures get +1/+1” effects because it would trigger before damage.

And it would have made it significantly harder to understand. Grok-ability is important.

Is Giant Growth the only boon that could be reprinted in standard? (Healing Slave too weak, Ancestral Recall & Bolt too strong, Dark Ritual too out of colour pie)

Yes, I believe so.

For clarification on my question I meant something that would allow a different card to have more targets. Like something that could make Giant Growth or Animate Dead target multiple things.

Copy effects essentially do that.

You've talked about scaling the boon cycle to Ancestral Recall before! Quoting a previous answer:
"This is a little out of my area of expertise, so I texted Donald Smith and he talked with a number of the play designers. Here’s his text:
"So the answers I’m getting right now are Lightning Bolt between 5 and 6, Dark Ritual between 4 and 5, Giant Growth between 7 and 10, Healing Salve between 20 and 100 (or infinite). There are also reasonable arguments being made for Bolt needing to be 7 or 10 and Giant Growth needing to be 20 (especially since a 100 point Healing Salve counters these two directly).¿¿My personal answer is Bolt is 6, Dark Ritual is 5, Giant Growth is 10, and Healing Salve at 100. I’m closer to Bolt and Giant Growth needing to be higher rather than lower too lol.”"

FYI

If I target a Creature on the battlefield with Giant Growth, I'm targeting a Creature, and not a creature spell. If I target a creature on the stack with Counterspell, or a creature in the graveyard with Reanimate, I'm targeting a creature spell, but not a Creature. Is that right?

A creature spell is only a creature on the battlefield, yes.

If or when: giant growth with trample. A keyword can really change a card!

We’ve had numerous Giant Growth effects with trample.

I was really interested in the idea of scaling the boon cycle, so here's another version: If the boon cycle were scaled to the point where they could all be comfortably printed into standard, what would they be?

Shock and Giant Growth are Stsndsrd staples. White can get 4 life, blue can draw one card and black could get one black mana (it would be out of color pie though), but each would have room for an additional effect.

Heya, Mark! Colour pie question: Are all colours allowed to tutor for specific cards (i.e. "a card named X") regardless of those cards' types? For instance, while green can't tutor for instants in general, could it fetch Giant Growth specifically?

Each color has specific things it can tutor for. We will occasionally do bends.