Your article today mentions Set Design tried putting a straight Recurring Nightmare reprint into Modern, then removed it when it playtested too strong... Recurring Nightmare is on the Reserved List, which your article didn't mention. Did it not come up until after the playtests?

It’s possible they put it in and then remembered they couldn’t. I just know it was in the file for a short blip. Maybe they were getting a sense of it knowing they’d tweak it later.

First, I want to say I really like Thunder Junction more than I thought I would. It could end up being my favorite set this year. Great job to you and the team! Second, back in AFR, the commander precons had a humanoid adventurer face commander and a monster alt commander. I thought that was really cool because I'm a big fan of monsters and weird creatures and love building decks with them as the commander. Magic has some really great monsterous creature types that are underrepresented as legendary creatures. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I'd love for one humanoid and one beast/monster commander to be the norm for precon design. The Grand Larceny, Desert Bloon, and Quick Draw precons are great examples of this. Having Yuma, Gonti, and Stella Lee as the humanoid face commanders and Kirri Talented Sprout, Felix Five Boots, and Eris Roar of the Storm as the more monstrous alt commanders.
I bring this up because I was really hoping for something a little more monsterous for the Most Wanted precon alt commander. Like a Skeleton or Nightmare or Horror or Minotaur, or Bird. Something along those lines would be really interesting with one of the outlaw creature types. Instead, we got a Dwarf. Vihaan Goldwaker is a great card, don't get me wrong. I just wish that every precon could have alt commanders that are a little more "out there" in terms of creature type usage instead of another human or dwarf or elf, etc. What are your thoughts on this?

My thoughts are there’s some one out there who loves Dwarves who’s super happy because we made a Dwarf card for them. I hear you that you’d like more non-humanoid legendary creatures, and that is something we’re dedicated to doing, as evidenced by the decks you did enjoy, but there’s a lot of player desires to meet, which means we need to spread the love a bit.

"Dakkon Blackblade is definitely a color pie break, right? Right?!?It’s a green ability on a white/blue/black card. : )"
This made me think of a related question. I know counting lands generally is core green, but is counting swamps still in pie for black? (ex: Nightmare, Mutilate, Cabal Coffers)

Yes, it’s still in pie for black.

Curious as to how hard of a decision it was to let Space Beleren through and be legal. Like, it does seem like it works rule wise, but the card is a tracking nightmare

Magic has many eternal legal cards with tracking issues. It’s not a deal breaker.

I know the mixing of silver border and black Border in the printing process is a logistical nightmare, but what about a thicker silver 'outline' around acorn cards and keeping the border black?

The two can be mixed with enough planning. It was hard to retrofit.

could there exist a planes that its mechanics are based on the rarity of the card? for exemplo a plane on where all creatures are common , all artificats are mytichs and etc

That would be a nightmare to design, and the normal rules can’t mechanically care about rarity. (Acorn has and can.)

I was severely disappointed that Ikoria focused on nightmares instead of insects, as bugs are one of my favorite things ever. I'd like to also voice my intense interest in a bug set.

Insects were on the table, but didn’t capture the feel we wanted for the set’s monsters.

I would just like to express great love for the way the cards Stroke of Midnight and Glass Casket provide context for the characters of Ash Party Crasher and Neva Plagued by Nightmares without needing a secondary source like the Meet the Legends articles! Very in favor of this approach going forward!

I’ll pass along the compliment to the creative team.

I'm so excited for Return to Return to Revenge of Return to Zendikar! I'm surprised everything in the set is lands, considering your stance on gimmick sets, not to mention the rules nightmares you've said land creatures are. Still, I'm excited for the new Battle for Zendikar land battle, as well as the Wrenn and Ashaya planeswalker land!

I’m excited for adventure lands. Such a great fit for Zendikar.

What's the main driver behind giving a batch a name (i.e. historic) vs just saying "Samurai and Warrior" or "horrors and nightmares"? I prefer the former personally.

Usually, it has to have three or more items to batch (aka create a term).