from what you said to a previous asker, if I recall, you and the team try to be cautious about discard, and also counterspell to some extent because of how both mecanic are "feel bad" overall.Why not making more card that, don't per say straight up negate, but at least react to those type of effect, like that one baloth that, if I'm not mistaken, come into the board if an enemy effect would make you discard it ? Are those considered too polarizing or difficult to balance or make interesting ?

The problem solving it with a response is that you then only solve the problem for a) the people that own the card (even at common, the majority of players will never own it), and b) the more advanced players who understand that this is an answer to a problem and use it accordingly.

Might be outside your area of expertise, but figured I'd give it a shot:The art and flavor text for Negate in MOM both reference Ajani being cured, but in the story both Ajani and Nissa were cured. Do you know why only one of them is highlighted here?

Because a card has one image, so it was focused on that specific event.

Mark more of a statement and a request. We need less new counter spells per standard. It's ok to reprint things like cancel, negate and essence scatter. I know you just reprinted them but I mean in another current set. We don't need 10-20 different counter spells in standard. It's ok to have 1-3 new counterspells per current standard rotation. You don't need 10-20 it's to much.

Is there a Standard permission deck filled with all the different counterspells? Why is having 20-ish problematic in Standard?

You answered a question earlier about which parts of Nicol Bolas' personality were red-aligned; you mentioned that sometimes let his emotions sway him more than they should and that he was a dragon. While being a dragon does sound like a pretty good deal, the other trait sure sounds like purely downside. What aspects of Bolas' red-side are beneficial? Has being partly red-aligned helped him with this plans?

Being upside or downside doesn’t negate something being part of you.

Does that fact that, say, Negate couldn't counter a "green murder" make it harder or easier to put in without a break?

No impact either way.

While full deck tutoring is at a low, the impulae tutors eventally just combine and create a new issue, if I use Narset Parter of Veils and Vivian, Chapion of the Wild 2 times I will have a good idea the bottom 3rd of my deck putingbthem rangomly on the bottom doesnt negate that. Thats only reducing any advantage average players get while pro's are able to use that information to a significant advantage. So why keep it random?

We keep it random so players don’t have to exert a lot of mental energy for something that will seldom matter in gameplay.

Would you say cards like negate and shock are “deciduous cards”, where they may not appear in most sets, but its very likely to be in any given standard format?

I would use a different word because that’s not true of most deciduous things.

Why is the whole counter (negate) vs counter (+1/+1) thing a concern at all? It would be good practice not to have conflicting terms, but I don't really see how these terms could ever cause confusion. They have drastically different contexts, almost never appear on the same card together, and the word "counter" intuitively describes each mechanic to any English-speaker. Has someone really asked you, "Does Negate give +1/+1 to my Lightning Bolt?"

One of the reasons we haven’t changed it is the terms have very different contextual uses. In general, it’s better not having one vocabulary word mean two different things though.

Do artifact lands count for historic? Or does being a land negate it?

Artifact lands (and legendary lands) are historic but you don’t cast them.

I think the fear people have of a 'world of hats' is reasonable, even if it's misplaced. They're worried that using some sort of theme in a world makes it impossible to reuse the world with different themes or the theme with different worlds. I feel like Kaladesh giving us a new kind of artifact world is good evidence of a world using a theme again, and New Phyrexia is a good example of revisiting a world with a different theme, but I also think respecting and addressing that fear is important.

Fair point. Our goal is to make worlds that are both deep and defined. One though does not negate the other.Also, the primary lens that we show worlds is through a card set and the nature of that forces us to highlight more focused aspects of that world.Because we’ve moved to a system where we return to many worlds, that allows us the opportunity to show different facets. The new design model will also allow us to remain on a world and shift focus.