Gooday sir! I call upon the sacred right of birthday trivia to ask you about your favorite set to open packs from. I only really started playing when UB LOTR released and since then I've had some fun pulls including Ulamog showcase from MH3. I would love to see what luck brings from your favorite set to rip into.

I’ve been enjoying opening packs from upcoming Marvel sets. : )

How successful was Modern Horizons 3? Did its reception meet your expectations?

It’s doing very well. Expectations met. : )

Hey Mark! Not to be confrontational or anything but can we, at this point, say that the MH sets (specially mh3) caused power creep? The meta on the pro tour was pretty rough. Thanks for all your hard work!

It raised the power level of the format. That happens whenever enough new (relevant) cards enter a format. Before we starting making cards for Modern (when sets were mostly focused at Standard), the influx of (relevant) new cards was low, so format churn was low. Olds cards did get forced out by new cards, but it happened at a much slower rate. That’s not what “power creep” is. So, if you want to be unhappy with format churn due to products being created with a higher power level as they’re aimed at Modern, that’s very reasonable. It’s a “card influx” complaint not a “power creep” complaint.

Is there a reason why you seem to no longer print cards with the "when this is put into your graveyard, shuffle yard into library" text from the original elldrazi titans? It feels like a major part of their identity to me, and i was a bit sad to see that none of the titans in MH3 had it.

It doesn’t play well.

Mark, I play a lot of limited and one thing I've noticed with the new play boosters is that it is no longer guaranteed to have a card of every color in it. This is especially glaring in a set like MKM or MH3 with multicolored commons. In MH3 especially, since there are no colorless commons, I've opened several packs where it is missing a color and the only cards in my other color are multicolored, meaning I basically don't get a 1st pick. Is this a known problem? Is anything being done about it?

The collation only allows us to guarantee four colors and not five.

Hello, I heard something interesting about MH3 where you retried EVERY mechanic to see what would work with a new context or be interesting. You (WoTC) revisited many of my favorite mechanics like grandeur but didn't for probably my favorite. That mechanic is absorb, and while it has only been keyworded on one card "Lymph Sliver" it did see a continuation on my favorite card of all "Valkmira, Protector's Shield" alongside what would only a few sets later become ward. I wanted to know if you could share any insights on the designs taken with absorb or any other of your favorite mechanics? Thank you very much for your time.

I designed Lymph Sliver and absorb. If I remember correctly, I was riffing off of a shield mechanic from the Star Wars TCG. (It was a trading card game design lead by Richard Garfield that I was on the initial design team for.)

I've seen you asked about this a lot, but do you project us ever seeing the Future Sight frame ever again? I love how unique it was and is, and I am honestly surprised MH3 didn't have a frame treatment for it, given that Modern Horizons as a concept was inspired by Time Spiral block.

I get asked about it often. We would have to find the right place to use it, but I won’t say it couldn’t happen.

Birthday trivia request!My all time favorite card since I was 16 was Eight-And-A-Half Tails. Now I’m 34 as of today, and thinking back on how fondly I enjoyed the lore of the Kamigawa foxes.
Are there any Kamigawa foxes still alive in Neon Dynasty that were alive in the original Kamigawa block? I know there are references to Sensei Golden-Tail in NEO (and most recently in MH3) but are any of them still around? If so, are you allowed to disclose which ones are?

I wasn’t involved with Neon Dynasty’s creative, but my gut is they’re still around. Happy Birthday!

Hello Mark!

Sorry if this already got answered, Pinnacle Monk in Modern Horizons 3 seems to be an efreet from Tarkir, but in its typeline it's noted as a djinn. Is it the sign that efreet might come to have the same treatment as viashinos, nagas and cephalid in the future? (for thos who dont know, now with MH3 they are respectively lizards, snakes and octopuses)

We are no longer supporting the Efreet creature type. New “Efreets” will be Djinns.

Hi Mark!
Yesterday is my birthday. May I get trivia among one of my favorite cards - Worldfire, Wurmcoil Engine, Radiant Performer, Sundial of the Infinite, or Vizzerdrix? Or a random card from MH3 not covered by your previous Making Magic articles?

Vizzerdrix got created as a card for a product called Starter. The reason we made it is we had a series of TV commercials, one of which featured Kezzerdrix from Tempest (it involved mixing a wrestler, a chainsaw, and a bunny in a machine). A different ad in the same campaign used an Orgg. So to tie to those, we made a simpler Orgg and Vizzerdrix, as the original cards were too complicated for a beginner product.Happy Belated Birthday!