Would incubate for a different creature type be worded like Amass Orcs is or would it need a new keyword?

It’s possible we could Incubate <creature type>, but that isn’t currently how it works.

For your top 20 (non-evergreen) mechanics I noticed none were from this decade. What would you say is the best new mechanic from this decade so far?

Note that I would pick the mechanic that started a trend. Foretell is an awesome more recent mechanic, but Morph is the first to use face down as a resource, so I chose that for the talk.Amass, while not technically from this decade, is only five years old. Mechanics I really like from this decade include: alliance, backup, collect evidence, connive, corrupted, decayed, enlist, escape, foretell, incubate, learn/lesson, magecraft, mutate (although it has its complexity issues), party, prototype, reconfigure, role tokens, and shield counters.

Can mechanics with numbers have the number zero? (e.g. crew, amass, casualty, incubate, backup, descend, discover, etc.)

It depends on the mechanic. Some can, some can’t (or it wouldn’t practically mean anything).

What led you to making the Phyrexian Transformers in MOM sorcery speed as opposed to instant speed like adapt, monstrous and the EMN werewolves.

Playtesting the cards. Note that incubate filled the instant transmutation space.

On the last Drive to Work, Ethan mentioned balancing Planechase to reduce game times, and I was curious how the Plane cards get playtested (solo, only new, with all the old, etc)? I like to dabble a bit and try to stick somewhat close to your levels. I’m loving the new Planes and I hope the MOM Commander decks sell well and get us more! PS love MOM too, drafted U/R twice and lost, then stomped the table with B/W Incubate.

I went and asked Ethan. Here’s what he said:“In general, we playtested with the all of plane cards mixed together in a single deck, including the new and the reprinted cards. We had a lot of potential reprints to choose from, so it was worth our time to playtest reprints in case some of them weren’t good fits for the product. The single planar deck is how most people play ‘in the wild,’ so we tested that way. If there was a particular plane that we wanted to find out more about we would cheat it to the top few cards of the planar deck.”

Mark, i love Incubate. I love how it plays, i love the way it interacts with so many little things. But i also fear that we might not see it return for quite some time, since its so thematically tied to Phyrexia. What's your general philosophy when it comes to tying new mechanics to specific parts of the multiverse? What if a new mechanic that was tied to a specific plane lore-wise, became popular and was good enough to become evergreen or deciduous, what would you do?

We’re willing to bring back mechanics and change creature type elements. For example, Living Weapon returned as For Mirrodin!

Any particular reason we didn’t see any werewolves during March of the Machine? Were there any designed for the set that got cut?

The double-faced cards have specific uses (being Phyrexianized, Praetors, battles, incubate, etc.) in the set, so it wasn’t a good fit.

Hi Mark,Honest and good faith question:Why the return to more recently plains like eldraine and ixalan?Why would we not return to plains we haven't seen in a while,For example the mid 2010s bunch of Alara or Tarkir?(I also want to thank you for a brilliant prerelease - incubate is a fantastic mechanic and I am already brewing a commander deck for it)

Three-color worlds are trickier. Also, the more successful the original, the easier it is to convince the Powers That Be to return to a world.

Had a great time at prerelease! Incubate played better than I expected in practice, though a piece of feedback, many players there were confused with Incubate tokens being able to flip at instant speed when every other "pay-to-transform" card in the set (the Phyrexian mana ones and the praetors) have a sorcery speed restriction. Was that difference conscious?

Yes. They tried incubate tokens at sorcery speed and they played a lot worse.

Hi Mark! I did a prerelease for the first time sins AFR, and had an absolute blast. I achieved my best record in any tournament I’ve been in, 2-1, with my Golgori incubate deck. Thank you so much and please pass along my praise to all those who worked on it, from initial concept to final produce teams!

Will do.