Re: how should wheel of potential workThe way wheel of potential *TECHNICALLY* works right now is a 3 mana sorcery that says exile your hand and draw any number of cards. The way it’s currently worded works like this: 1. I cast wheel of potential2. I begin to resolve wheel of potential. First I get three energy3. Next declare a value for X. This is where the card starts to break.4. Once I declare a value for X, two things happen based on that value, completely independent of eachother.4a. I am given permission to pay X energy4b. Each player is given permission to exile their hand and draw X cards.
The issue here is that step 4b is tied to step 3, not 4a. It’s obvious that the intended design for this card is for the amount you draw to be determined by the amount of energy you pay. But with its current wording, you can declare X to be any number you want, and you get to draw X cards regardless of whether you pay any energy. I think you see the problem.

To quote Matt Tabak on Twitter:“No, if you don’t pay the energy, you don’t draw the cards. We may have to tweak that template, but the card doesn’t work that way.” #WotCstaff

Hi Mark,Wanted to forward this to you to see if you could help. I'm a judge and one of the best resources we have is Gatherer rulings. It allows us to shortcut searching the Comprehensive Rules for an answer at times and, more importantly, is very useful for a players settling kitchen table disputes. The problem is, we have a few Gatherer rulings that are incorrect. The examples that come to mind are the typo on Opposition Agent and the wholly incorrect ruling on Triumph of Saint Katherine. These have been known about for some time by Wizards and haven't been corrected. Could you please forward these to the appropriate parties? Also, where is the best place to forward findings like this other than bugging you, Matt Tabak, or Jess Dunks on social media?Sorry for the long winded ask. I hope you enjoy the holidays.

I’ll pass the note along.

I've noticed a few of the preview cards are using a new template that avoids the intervening if clause on triggers; is this something we should expect to see more of going forward, is there a philosophy behind when this will be used vs. intervening if, etc?

As this is outside my area of expertise, I asked editor Matt Tabak. This is what he said: “There are cases where an intervening if can’t become untrue in response or cases where the design wants the check to only happen at the moment the ability would trigger. In these cases, we’ll try to work in the “while” template, although intervening if clauses will very much be a part of the game going forward.”

these Release Notes are not just comprehensive, but they're very entertaining to read!!

Glad you enjoyed them. An uncredited Matt Tabak deserves a lot of credit for many of the jokes.

Mark, I just finished your templating Drive to Work with Matt Tabak and I want more. At least two more. I need that semicolon talk. <3

What did others think of the templating episode? Would you like more interviews that talk about aspects of the game rather than specific products?

im super excited to see the implementation of acorn stamps in unfinity, especially due to the way it can allow for more mechanically interesting and creative cards to be included in black bordered play (namely commander)! but it does make me wonder, from a set design standpoint: do you think the cards that were tweaked slightly to be non-acorn ever lost some potential fun in pursuit of making them make the cut to black border? do you think there are any non-acorn cards in unfinity that we wouldnt see in a more “normal” black bordered set due to how the design process opened up space for more experimentation, or in other words, are there some mechanically quirky, abnormal, or interesting cards that nevertheless made the cut into the non-acorn pile? i can imagine the design team seeing a card that they never would have imagined designing for a black bordered set and realizing “wait, actually does work in non-acorn formats!”

I put together a team to evaluate each card officially. It included Matt Tabak (the set’s editor),Jess Dunks (the Rules Manager), Carmen Handy (a play designer who evaluated the cards in eternal formats) and myself. For each card, we asked, “could this be black border?” There were a bunch where we said, “yeah, I guess it could” where I wouldn’t have guessed we’d say yes ahead of time.

Hello Mr. Rosewater! I had a lot of fun at the Midnight Hunt prerelease and even got to play werewolves! If I can offer one piece of constructive criticism, Day/Night was a little confusing in two-headed giant and there was no official rulings to fall back on. Nobody could quite agree if one person per team casting no spells was enough to turn Day to Night or if both had to cast no spells for the change to happen. We found a ruling by Tabak on twitter but some people didn’t know who he was and didn’t think it was very official. In the future for mechanics that trigger off of player actions like that, can there be official rulings posted by Wizards for two-headed giant specifically? Thanks!

When original Innistrad came out there were rules created for how the “werewolf mechanic” worked with Two-Headed Giant, and those were the rules Tabak was referring to. I agree we could have republished them.

I listened to your Unsanctioned podcast with Matt Tabak and I just want to say Matt is hysterical. Please give him a high five. Also have him own again.

I will pass along the kind words, and odds are I will gave him on again.

Who wrote the rulings for the unstable cards on Gatherer? Those ruling are very fun to read.

A combination of me and Matt Tabak.

I seem to be in the minority, but I would just like to say that I dislike the current trailers as they don't feature the gameplay of Magic at all. Sure, they're flavorful, but a gingerbread couple running from Garruk doesn't tell me anything about adamant or adventures.

The trailer is trying to capture the feel of the world more than explain the gameplay. Matt Tabak makes videos to do the latter. A lot less people watch those. : )