Hi Mark! I know it'd be a fast return for a new mechanic, but can I get a "maybe" on Saddle/Mount creatures returning for the Death Race set?

Maybe. : )

Gavin put out a video where he talks with Jeremy Geist about OTJ's mechanics and listening made me realize from a pure mechanical standpoint the mechanics in the set, plot and spree, are just two of my favorite mechanics. Past that outlaws are super flavor and just a really cool batch to build around and mounts are an amazing way at capturing the horse back flavor, something Magic hasn't had until now. Honestly, OTJ has one of the strongest collection of mechanics of any set in a long time.

Thanks. I’m quite proud of them.

If i kill a saddling creature in response to saddle, why is the mount still saddled? This flavor mismatch has led to misplays :(

Sometimes making a mechanic 100% match reality leads to worse gameplay. Also, sometimes doing so adds a lot of words, and it’s not worth it.

Could crewing vehicles / mounting mounts ever give abilities to the crew / rider?

Because they have to be tapped, it’s hard to give them abilities for the turn that are relevant. I could imagine giving them something that’s more relevant longterm like counters.

Mount/saddle has an “elephant in boots” situation, and in particular it feels like it would be optimal deck building to include as many mounts as possible in a deck focused on the mechanic, so you’d end up with a lot of mounts saddling other mounts. Was saddle ever restricted on what kind of creatures could do it? (For example, non-mount creatures.)

We talked about it, but didn’t feel we needed the restriction as it just didn’t happen enough to be worrisome. It’s similar with how we didn’t stop animated Vehicles from crewing other Vehicles.

Are you concerned at all that limiting Saddle in OTJ to sorcery speed will reduce future design space? It seems the designs in OTJ are largely limited to things that are good on your turn, so for 90% of use cases they'll be activated at sorcery speed anyway. But now in the future if you wanted to make defensive Mounts for whatever reason, you'd have to come up with a new mechanic or change the rules.

Mounts are already creatures which can block. The sorcery speed was done very consciously.

So OTJ feels like a very top down western plane to me, and the Villain aspect barely pings in my radar. This isn't a complaint, the western setting is much more interesting to me than the Villain theme. But aside from having a bunch of named characters, most of whomever have no lore to tell us if they are Villains or not, what aspects of the set are you guys seeing as Villainous? Mechanics wise, spree, deserts, outlaws, mercenary tokens, and mounts all feel westerm inspired, where plot is certainly named like its a villain mechanic, but doesn't particularly feel villanous. Leaving crime as the only thing that feels like a Villain mechanic, and even then, most westerns have the heros doing a crime. I think it might a case where the setting and theme weirdly had too much overlap.

Committing crimes, the outlaw batch, plotting, spree, the mercenary token - all villain themed. Only saddle/mount and “desert matters” is western themed (without a tie to villains).

I was interested to see that Saddle can only be activated at ‘Sorcery Speed’. If you could go back, would you have made Crew function the same way? I would have expected the two to work similarly. I guess with how the mounts are functioning, being able to activate it at instant speed is kind of meaningless, except I suppose to Saddle in response to removal.

We need crew to function that way because we want Vehicles to be able to block. Saddled creatures can naturally do that, and the effects we want for saddle are more offensive in nature.

Is there a specific reason why the designs of the guns in Thunder Junction are so different from the look of historical rifles and revolvers? I get that fully realistic guns with bullets would be out of place in mtg but guns are so integral to the western genera that it feels like watching a western movie where all the horses are inexplicably replaced with camels.

Sort of as if the mounts of the set were mostly not horses? : )We’re doing a Magic world inspired by the western-genre, not an exact copy of it.

Is a mount vehicle something that could be made in something like a Modern Horizons set?

I’m not quite sure what that mechanically entails. If you’re already a creature, why do you have to turn into one?