Hey Mark, I first started playing mtg with Core 2011, but didn't really get into it until Core 2012. I loved the illusions in m12, and the flavor mechanic where if they were targeted they (vanished) were sacrificed, along with their lord of the unreal. It was the first mtg deck I ever made, and I still have it today. But 12 years later illusions are... Basically no different than they were over a decade ago. There have been very few illusions since then, and even the lord has never left m12. I know it's probably tough to do outside of a core set, but will we ever see more illusion support?

I assume eventually.

Would Illusions of Grandeur still be Blue? Or what color would its effect fall too?

It wasn’t blue (colorpiewise) when it was printed. It’s white or green.

You’ve said before that smothering tithe was a mistake and a pie break. If it didn’t trigger on the regular draw for turn, and only extra draws, would that be more in line with white’s ramp philosophy?

White’s taxing has to be a real choice that players can make, not something that gives the illusion of choice, but almost never gets paid.

Additional pieces and complexity have always been part of the game, in Alpha ,The Hive made tokens; Clockwork Beast, Cyclopean Tomb, Fungusaur, Gaea's Liege, Living Artifact, Rock Hydra and Scavaging Ghoul used counters of some kind. In the same set Aspect of Wolf, Fireball, Gaea's Liege and Personal Incarnation involve fractions with rounding up and down(many players still have some difficulty using these cards) and then just out right comp lexity, Camouflage, Illusionary Mask, Lich,Raging River and Word of Command. Not to mention Banding, Protection, interrupt batches, tapped artifacts turning off, tapped blockers dealing no damage, in addition to individual card interactions. This game has always been complex and drawn on other components outside of just the cards. All to the enrichment of its players. Do you think without the conceit of this complexity as many early board, minature, rpg, card game players would have been drawn to this azmazing game?

I think complexity is more feature than bug, but it’s still a dangerous force to be used carefully.

Mark - I think the main reason people are upset about stickers is because they are eternal-legal. I myself am very excited to experience them in the limited environment of Unfinity, but will feel uncomfortable seeing them across the table in commander, as it feels too whacky compared to the “normal” style of gameplay which I have become accustomed to over many years. Even though stickers mechanically work within black-border rules, I can’t help but view them as silver-border territory, which I feel requires a certain “goofy mindset” to enjoy. I think it’s wonderful that Magic continues to push boundaries (it’s the reason the game keeps me invested and excited) however I believe it is equally critical to provide players with the option to “opt-out” should they feel that a new set/product/mechanic does not resonate with them. A good comparison would be the frustration caused by the mechanically unique Universes Beyond cards (The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, etc). From my perspective, the majority of frustration was not caused by the creation of these IP crossovers, but rather the inability of players to opt-out of interacting with (playing against) these cards in eternal formats. Thankfully, WOTC addressed this frustration by agreeing to print “Universes Within” versions, which more-or-less seems to have satisfied the upset community. In the same way that players were afraid of being unable to “opt-out” of interacting with certain cards (non-Magic IP’s), I feel the same anxiety towards being unable to “opt-out” of playing with a certain mechanic (stickers) that has now become “welded” to the game’s structural foundation. Thanks for taking the time to listen and respond to people’s frustrations and concerns, and I hope that you realize there is a powerful, protective love of “Magic” at the core of which all these emotions are orbiting. P.S. have you seen The Professor’s latest video on stickers? He sums up these concerns quite nicely.

Here’s the problem with “opt in”. It can’t work. It presumes that players all want certain things, and are equally hesitant about the same things that they would prefer to opt-in to. But that’s not how the Magic audience actually functions. (I know the echo chamber of social media often creates the illusion that everyone wants the same thing, but it’s just that, an illusion.)Each player has their own list of what they want in the game and what they don’t. And those lists are all over the place. Let me give you an example. Here are some of things that you would have to opt in to if we removed things that a number of players have asked be removed from the game(and this is just a small version of the list off the top of my head): violent imagery, land destruction, black cards, fairy tale references, anything using counters, double-faced cards, counterspells, hybrid mana, outside play aids, stealing effects, humanoid animals, other IPs, discard, anything creating tokens, skeletons, cards that are humorous in nature, copying effects, anything “modern”, cards accessing cards outside the game/from the sideboard.Everything you love about the game, that makes Magic Magic for you, someone else despises and wishes it weren’t part of the game. That’s why I like my buffet metaphor. The key to our success is to offer lots of different things and let the audience pick and choose which parts they want to partake in. But what if my opponent plays thing I don’t like? Well, that’s what playing a customizable game is all about. You get to experience what makes other players happy. Maybe you’ll come to realize it’s not as bad as you imagined, maybe you’ll even come to love it yourself when exposed to it, or maybe you’ll continue hating it, but accept it as a by-product of you getting to play what you love. That’s the core of the issue. It’s not our job to keep people from being exposed to things they hate, but others love. It’s our job to provide a wide range of gaming options and let the players sort out which pieces they want to interact with. That can be through formats, through play groups, through play spaces, etc. To return to the buffet metaphor. Our job is to provide a wide variety of different food, so that everyone’s meal can be a combinations of things they enjoy. We’re not going to remove popular dishes from our buffet because some diners don’t like them. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it. If you hate the smell of it, don’t eat at a table where someone else is enjoying it.“Please force players to have to ask my permission if they can play what they want to play” is a recipe for disaster.

About life gain, do the old cards like Illusions of Grandeur still considered in blue color pie? If not, what color it would be nowadays.

It wasn’t blue when it got made. I tried to keep it out of blue, but failed. EDIT: Oops, I tried to stop the throwback one. The original was Ice Age which predated me.

Hi Mark! About the "Dreadmaw Cycle", couldn't it be done by using drawbacks? I mean, Phantasmal has the illusion drawback. A black one could damage you every turn or something, for

Whether or not it could be done is a separate issue from whether or not it should be done.

On Rarity: Why does it seem that junk rares show up FAR more frequently when opening packs than top tier rares? No matter what set, every time I open a couple boxes I end up with multiples of the junk rares and very, very few of the top tier ones. Why is there always a pile of Eijango Uprising and never a pile of Boseiju, Who Endures after opening several boxes? Never a pile of Dryad of the Illusion Grove, always a pile of Nessian Boar? Do all Rares actually show up at the same Rarity?

All rares are at the exact same rarity (aka they appear the same number of times on the sheets).

Illusions are known the die the moment they are targeted, you had to indirectly give them hexproof back in the day to protect them. would Ward be a good idea on future illusions?

Sure.

According to the gatherer entry on Illusionary Mask "While the creature card is face down, it’s a 2/2 creature with no name, mana cost, color, creature type, abilities, or expansion symbol. Since it has no mana cost, its mana value is 0." Why is expansion symbol included if it doesn't have any in-game meaning?

At the time that was written, it might have mattered. It no longer does and no one has felt the need to rewrite it as it not having one causes no problems.