I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

Hi Mark! Assuming you were to begin selecting a number of silver-bordered Un-Cards to be brought into black border, would a card's funny name deny its inclusion? E.g. "Box of Free-Range Goblins"

No. Magic has plenty of silly names on eternal legal card.

Are all the half-decks in Jumpstart of equal rarity, or will I for example be 3x as likely to open Goblins as I am Phyrexians?

There are half-decks of each rarity, meaning some themes show up more frequently.

I had my birthday a week ago. I already know much of what there is to know about what I'm interested in, so how about a twist? WE provide trivia! I'll start with: The Dark was the first set with an enemy color card - Dark Heart of the Woods.

I played a lot with Dark Heart of the Wood. The Dark has three gold cards, one black/green (Dark Heart of the Woods), one black/red (Marsh Goblins) and on red/green (Scarwood Goblins). White and blue then each got an extra card to balance the colors. Happy Birthday!

Mark, you've said before that you greatly prefer humanoid planeswalkers because you feel the audience needs to connect with them... How's your market research on nonhumanoid 'walkers? I personally vastly prefer video games in which I can play something non-human and ideally nonhumanoid, and I NEVER play as humans if I have the chance to be something else. In MTG, Vraska, Bolas, and Ugin are the coolest walkers just because they're "not just another human". PLEASE start branching out more. ~20%?

Ajani is a Cat.
Kiora is a Merfolk.
Karn is a Golem.
Daretti is a Goblin.
Sorin is a Vampire.
Arlinn Kord is a Werwolf.
Ob Nixilis is a Demon.
They’re not all Human.

Do you think it would be possible to see a undo of the increase in the number of uncommons per set? My experience so far has been somewhat negative. I feel like it is harder to draft with a specific build-around uncommon now. Uncommons that support and push archetypes of a draft format are still fine currently (ex. Chief of the Edge) but it feels like the unique strategies that rely on seeing multiples of the same uncommon, like Skywise Teachings or Goblinslide, are harder to draft successfully.

The problem was 60 was getting us too punched and we weren’t able to address all the different audiences. Also interestingly, some players enjoy variance in draft (getting to play with different cards) more than consistency.