Hi Mark, sorry if weird but last night I dreamed I was a guest in your house. It was a little awkward but you were very nice. Outside your kitchen window there were some very aggro squirrels. Just thought you might like to know (or maybe not, but here we are).

I’m glad I was a good dream host. I’ll keep an eye out for dream squirrels.

Can you confirm that the Bloomburrow Toski isn't canon? I know the Imagine:Critters cards aren't generally, but he's a special guest so I'm not entirely clear if that still apllies. (If I sent a similar message before, apologies for the mistake)

I don’t think the critter cards are canon.

Not so much a question as a wish... your solo episodes of Drive to Work are typically very good. But your guest episodes often suffer from a lack of quality audio setup and editing. I get the impression you're doing it all yourself, which is...fine... But there has to be someone at Wizards who could make a few quick adjustments to up the overall audio quality. The recent MH3 episode sounds like you just have a mic sitting over someone on speaker phone. It's hard to listen to.

Erik’s interview had some specific audio challenges that are very atypical.

Do you only play limited, or do you have some go-to decks for other formats too ?

Most of my Magic play is through work and that is mostly limited. I do build decks with new mechanics for playtesting, but that’s very removed from playing normal formats. Most of my Commander play is playing with guests at Wizards, and that usually uses preconstructed Commander decks.

Hey Mark, I started off as a modern player and later converted to commander. I REALLY like building decks. I find myself starting to build MANY decks but never finishing them. I used to try and optimize every deck until I realized that doing it that way was actually less fun. I have now discovered that it is MORE DIFFICULT to design a deck to be fun that it is to simply optimize it. Based on your podcasts, I know fun has a lot to do with variance, epic comebacks, and other stuff as well. I would like to learn more on how to design a deck that is more fun!

It might be best to get a guest to do this topic in a podcast. My heavy Johnny deck building days are a bit behind me.

I just want to say I'm really happy with how the Outlaws of Thunder Junction product line spoilers have been done. Having each part of the product line, Special Guests, Main Set, Breaking News, The Big Score, and the Commander decks their own largely self contained time to be shown made everything really focused. My one point of feedback is commander decks probably should have had two days instead of BIG. Four full decks is a LOT of information to dump in a single day and is better over two imo.

I’ll pass that note along.

It's birthday trivia time, and I would like some trivia on my birthday twin, Gavin Verhey.

Here’s a sweet story about Gavin. Every year, I throw a holiday party at my house (our annual Holiday Cookie Party). I live at the top of a pretty big hill. The first year Gavin started at Wizards, he came to the party. At the end of the party, Gavin thanks me and says he has to go. Realizing he didn’t come with anyone, and knowing he didn’t (at the time) have a car, I said, “Gavin, how did you get here?”“I took the bus,” he says. The bus drops off at the bottom of the hill, which is, as a said above, pretty far away. “You walked here from the bus?!” “Yeah, I was excited to be invited. I didn’t want to miss it.” We made sure Gavin got a ride home from one of the guests.Happy Birthday!

Could you ever do a DTW and discuss how particular feedback shaped the design of a set? Like what legends were decided in Outlaws

I’ll need to bring on a guest. Most legendary creatures aren’t known during vision design.

(Pssst, the official announcement of Bloomburrow states that Jace and other characters that may appear on Bloomburrow as animals are part of the “Imagine: Courageous Critters” showcase. So the official answer should be something along the lines of “they are just fun showcase art :)” )(Your answer “As we get closer to Bloomburrow’s release, we’ll be able to answer this question.” implies they may be part of the story or part of a bonus sheet or, most likely, part of the Special Guests or The List cards)(I’m writing with parenthesis so that other blogatog readers can’t see what I’m whispering)

FYI

I'm not personally hung up on cards caring about rarity, but as far as caring about the cards being the same across printings, the types for many creatures have been updated in their oracle text and we follow the most recent oracle information. Could that be an option for caring about rarity as well? It could go by the most recent oracle rarity.

That’s a giant can of worms for three big reasons:1) It’s hard to track/remember. And it doesn’t have things like art cues to help.2) It could causes frequent change in functionality. Creature types at most change once, and there aren’t lots of cards that care about a specific creature type outside of handful of popular creature types, ones we don’t tend to change. 3) Deciding what to count for “last printing” could be tricky. Any version including digital? Just tabletop printings? Does it have to be main set? Do The List and Special Guest printings count? How about Commander decks where rarity isn’t even based on rarity? How about Secret Lairs?