Hi Mark! Us Vorthoses were SO happy to see the return of the Planeswalker’s guides. But can you pass along the request to bring back the legends articles too? Many players enjoy having a little background on the characters they see on the cards.

Will do.

What was the worst limited environment in modern magic history?

Legends was the most painful limited environment I’ve ever played. (In its defense, it wasn’t build to be played in limited.)

Is there a cycle of legendaries with all 3 color combinations for bloomburrow?

I don’t believe there’s a three-color cycle.

Should all ten creaure types from bloomburrow receive a commander that explicitly supports the creature type as a typal commander?

All have legendary creatures in the proper colors, but I don’t think they’re all typal.

Would it be accurate to assume that three-color legendaries are usually designed for commander?

While they’re not always designed for Commander, we think about their impact on Commander.

Hey mark, long time reader, also long time asker. I like a challenge when deckbuilding. When I first found out about your psychographics, I thought “woah! it even have the same name as me!” (John). Commander helps tickle that itch for me, because I can start off with a dumb premise and try to make that concept as best I can, and since it’s not a competitive format, I know that there will always be SOMEONE with a deck on a similar power level, however bad that terrible deck idea ends up being.This brings me to a qualm that I personally have, and have seen purely anecdotal evidence that other people have too.It feels kinda lame when you guys make a commander that’s just “this is the best commander for X”. More and more we’re getting legends where they’re just the *correct* choice. If I want to build a sultai graveyard deck, Muldrotha is the answer. Nothing tops it, and I doubt anything every will top it. And that’s just one archetype. 5 color sagas? Bombadil. Snow? Jorn and Isu. Flash tribal? Nymris. Sure there are other cards that can be the commander, but you can say that about anything. Sure, I COULD make a Rakdos exile deck with Pavel Maliki in the command zone, but that’s just objectively wrong. The commander is always gonna be prosper. My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to say “how do I make this work” when you’re just handing us the blueprints and all the parts with a step by step instruction booklet on what to do.To be fair, many archetypes have so much innate complexity to them and have reached a critical mass of options where it’s impossible to tell what the “best” option is, as there are so many different facets and roads to go down. Orzhov aristocrats and mono-green stompy are easy examples.But the fact that it isn’t always the case doesn’t change the fact that happens a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way, but I’m also sure that if it was a majority opinion in the community y’all wouldn’t be doing it this much. I just want to know if you have anything to say about this perception that I and many others hold. Thank you for all you do in magic, I hope you respond.

One of the most common requests I get here on the blog is “make this color combination Commander for this particular theme”. Eventually, for some of them, we find an opportunity to make it. We don’t know when that opportunity will arise again. We shouldn’t try to make the best Commander we can for that slot? If it’s too weak, players will just complain and ask we make another one. The reality is a lot of players want prescriptive answers, and there’s no way to make them for the players that want them and not for the players that don’t. The idea is that players who want to do something different have access to the history of Magic to find less obvious answers.

I don't dislike outlaw, but I don't see how it makes sense as a single-set mechanic. For Limited, things would be a lot cleaner if you just added a new Outlaw creature type. For Constructed the backwards compatibility is useful, but a single set's worth of payoffs isn't enough to make it worth building around.
So I think batches like outlaw would work more effectively if you intend to use them regularly rather than as single-set mechanics which might possiblysee a return several years later.

For 4-of, 60-card formats, there are plenty of Outlaw mattering cards. You don’t need that many when using four copies.For 1-of, singleton formats, there are four legendary creatures that care about Outlaws.Both have 31 years of creatures of the five relevant creature types.

I really liked the Dominaria United Legends Retold, is there any chance the remaining legends characters might get new designs at some point in the future?

People liked those cards, so yes, there is a chance.

Have you ever tried to design a commander? If so which one?

I’ve designed many legendary creatures, some of which get played as Commanders.

Of the over 27,000 Magic cards made, only four have the word Princess in their name. The first Princess Lucrezia came out in Legends back in 1994. Two are from Eldraine, our fairy tale inspired plane: Beloved Princess and The Princess Takes Flight. The final one is the only Universes Beyond card, from The Princess Bride Secret Lair: Buttercup, Provincial Princess.

I don't mean to "Uhm, actually" but don't Princess Twilight Sparkle and Nightmare Moon // Princess Luna also count twoards the Princess name count?

They do. I don’t know why my search didn’t bring them up.