Hey Mark, could cards be reprinted as text less full arts with the same art they already had? I just saw Campbell White's art for the elemental incarnation cycle in the MH3 special guests for the first time, and think that it actually gets hurt by the text box blocking a bit of it, and think it would be really cool if versions with just the art could exist.

It depends on the art ratio.

If you’re returning to the original “players don’t know all the cards” vision, isn’t printing cards which don’t say what they do (textless, the less-legible frame treatments, and lesser-used keywords without reminder text) a bad idea?

There is tension between cards carrying all the information and players having access to more incarnations of cards to express themselves. In a world where almost everyone carries a telephone and databases exist, we’ve decided to allow more expression. Beginners, by the way, have far less access to the versions that don’t have all the text.

So I know you didn't play too big of a hand in the Doctor Who set, but I'm disappointed that I can't have all the doctors in one deck with commanders from.the set, (even though i completely understand why it was unable to happen) any ideas to help out a nerdy magic player?

You need permission from you’re play group, but I can solve your problem with one non-Doctor Who card:

Note that you can name The Doctor with Vorthos and it counts all incarnations. Have fun!

Historically, Beebles, in both eternal and acorn incarnations, have an ability that makes them unblockable depending on the defending player satisfying a condition (controls an artifact, controls an enchantment, controls two nonland permanents which share an artist, wasn’t wearing glasses when it was cast). BOB has an unblockable ability instead tied to activating a loyalty ability and cards in your hand. Why was Bamboozling Beeble from Unfinity instead given Protection, rather than a proper unblockable ability (ex. “~ can’t be blocked as long as defending player controls a Robot creature”)?

It was felt protection had an unblockability component, so it was good enough.

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.

is there a plan to ever print more 4 color cards? I know theyre hard to give an identity to, but on the one hand there are some deck plans that only need 4 colors that it would be fun to have a dedicated commander for (in my case my doom foretold + enigmatic incarnation gladiator deck that it would be fun to turn into a commander deck, that is in the atraxa colors, but doesn't synergise with her at all), and on the other hand it just feels like such an unchecked box. There are in total 11 4 color cards in the whole game (the nephilim, the 4 color commanders, and omnath), That feels like such a dirth.

I agree that there’s a demand and we should figure out a product where they make sense.

I don't know how others feel about this, but I'm not that big of a fan of the amount of old characters in the main DMU set that appear through zombification, spirit form, reincarnation, etc. I love nostalgia and throwbacks (love the box topper legends) and I don't mind current characters being tragically corrupted (like Ajani), but something about the old ones feels fanservicey in a cheap way. Their story was already over and adding them back to the present canon for nostalgia feels bad somehow.

How do others feel about this?

Was there any talk to giving the Shrines a creature type like incarnation? Feels weird that they don't have a type at all.

I’m not sure much else fits.

Happy Thanksgiving Mark. As a fan of Populate, I was a little disappointed that it got missed in the Ravnica and RTR Storm Scale podcast. Any chance you could describe how it was designed?

It was designed as a token version of proliferate. The first incarnation copied one of each different token, but that was busted, so we pulled back to just copying one token. It was popular, but requires a bunch of infrastructure to use. It’s a 5 on the Storm Scale.

I know that Wrenn and Six was the last incarnation seen, but since we're on Innistrad, why not Wrenn and 13?

How much time do you think has passed? Wrenn lost seven treefolk?