Hey Mark, I just read the most recent Making Magic and saw the idea of “cameo” cards come I with Massacre Girl and Ojer Pakpatiq and I wanted to give my support and say I love how this is implemented and hope this sticks around for future sets!

That’s the current plan.

Hi Mark! I have to say I'm really pleasantly surprised by the new Massacre Girl. I thought that after you stated that the design team soured on -1/-1 counters we would've seen them only as extras like Spitting Dilophosaurus. I hope it will be included in your card by card article, I'm really curious to learn how it came to be.

It’s a short story. Someone designed it and it was a really cool design. We liked enough to decide to let it be a one-of. Our use of cameos has been changing a little what we’ll do at high rarities as a one-of.

I ran out of text space. I meant cards like Forbidden Orchard in Massacre Girl, Nomad Stadium in Darien, or Sorrow's Path in Enrage decks. Drawbacks that are drawbacks in 99% of decks, but good on rare occasions because they are one of the few cards that do that thing some other card cares about. I'm asking for more weird, one of a kind drawbacks, including ones that are bafflingly awful until someone figures it out.

Players do like drawbacks you can turn into a positive with proper deck building, but usually a bit more of the time than 1%. What you’re asking for is mostly just cards with big downsides which are pretty unpopular. We make them on occasion, but not often.

We ask for creature cards from the game's story often (Massacre Girl being just one example). Are there any notable characters *you* want to see in card form some day? If so, who?

I would like to see a Takara card. Who knows who that is?

So I just finished reading war of the spark ( it’s marvelous by the way) And is that Araithia Shokta represented of the massacre girl card?

No, Rat is a different character. She was made by Greg Weissman after the set was finished. That’s why she doesn’t have a card.

Feather, Massacre Girl, Fblthp, it seems like you guys just went down the list of notable Ravnican characters that didn't have cards yet and gave them cards. Did you do this because this is the last time we're seeing Ravnica for the forseeable future?

I can’t comment on that just yet.

"There are few sets that couldn’t justify a tri-colored card. It’s just something we’re judicious with." Going forward, if you have a set mechanic that appears in more than two colors, it might be a good idea to design a rare or mythic legend in those colors for that mechanic. Say, if SOI had a UBR Runo Stromkirk for Madness, or Kaladesh had a WBG legend for Fabricate.

I understand this is a common request from Commander players and we try to do things like this when we can. It’s important to understand that we have a lot of audiences we’re trying to serve. Let’s take the legendary creatures in War of the Spark as an example. We only have so many slots for legendary creatures (because if you don’t care about the flavor/Commander-ness of them, the ability is just a drawback), so we have to pick and choose them carefully. War of the Spark is an event set and also a non-guild Ravnica set. There are a lot of Ravnican characters that either players wanted to see fighting in the war or haven’t ever had the chance to have a card before. Making a three-color legendary creature meant not making a Fblthp or a Massacre Girl and we chose to side with the Vorthoses over the Commander players with our legendary slots in this set due to the nature of the set.

Data on characters without cards - Hal and Alena from Innistrad easily top the pack at 38. Yawgmoth got 30, Serra 27, w/b Innistrad Angel 22, Fblthp 18, Urza 15, Feather 13, Svogthir 10, Taysir 8, Simic and Mat'Selesnya and Massacre Girl all got 7, Raavi/Gma Sengir 6, and Commodore Gruff and Ashnod got 5. I omitted everyone with less than 5 votes.

FYI

If or when: Massacre Girl legendary creature?

More when than if. Especially, if players keep asking for it.

Hey Mark, was wondering if we'd be getting more side characters from past sets who didn't get their own card showing up in future supplemental products such as the Commander sets. For example, any chance of a Massacre Girl card, the serial killer from Return to Ravnica?

Commander decks have started doing more of those.