Does the math on imbalanced factions change if it's just five two color factions with two of them being the same typal/theme. Something like Izzet Weirds, Simic Elementals, Golgari Squrrels, and Mardu (Boros and Orzhov) Vampires?

Five two-color factions isn’t “imbalanced”.

From what I can gather all the duos, like Bakersbane Duo are in shards: Bakersbane duo is green but fits in a squirrel (bg) or raccoon deck (rg), making it a basically a Jund card. The black cards are an exception: Glivedive duo is in a wedge, Mardu (bat wb and lizard rb). Presumably the other black one will be squirrel (bg) and rat (ub)My question is: why? Is the pattern of shards intentional? Is the deviation to one color having wedges intentional?

The only guideline was each animal appeared in just two duos.

You've said you've been seeding the Bloomburrow creature types for a few sets now. Was the decision to make Aclazotz a Bat God, and thus introduce bats and bat themes to the white/black Ixalan vampires, at all influenced by the Bloomburrow bats? There are a lot of pretty obvious similarities (colors, animal type, religion) between the two archetypes across the sets.

If you see any relevant animals in the last Magic “year”, we were very aware of their Bloomburrow needs when we added them to files.

I was checking out the previews for Bloomburrow and people were raising concerns about Ygra turning every creature into an artifact creature (since Foods are inherently artifacts). Someone raised the point that those tokens (Clues, Treasure, Food, Maps, Blood Junk, etc) could have been given a unique type to avoid unwanted artifact-related issues. Was that ever considered/discussed?(loving the cards so far and I already love "Hop/bounce" as a mechanic for frogs and foraging for squirrels! Also looking forward to the pay/gain life for bats since Orzhov is my favorite pair. My compliments to the chefs! Great cooking!)

We consider artifact synergy a feature, not a bug.

"Silverquill is more geared towards communication than psychology."Admittedly, I am neither a communications nor a psychology major, but surely knowing how best to communicate to an audience requires an understanding of the psychology of that audience?

The study of communication and psychology do overlap in spots, but they are two separate studies.

Hello Mr. Rosewater!It's my birthday today, and I'm hoping you may answer something for me. Which college of Strixhaven would be the home for a creative writing major?I love being creative, so I feel like Prismari might be the right place for me, especially since I mainly tap into red mana. I actually have a Bachelor of Arts in English though, so Silverquill might be more appropriate.What do you think? Would I be able to flex my creativeness with writing in Prismari, or would everything under that specialty go with Silverquill?Thank you, and I hope you're have a nice and festive weekend!

I think creative writing is based in Silverquill with some classes in Prismari.

"Since strixhaven is founded on the contradictions between subjects which side do you fall on in each of the 5 conflicts?
White/black -> whiteBlue/red -> redBlack/green -> blackRed/white -> whiteGreen/Blue -> blue"I'm curious if you answered this specifically as regards the strixhaven school conflicts (e.g., "is art emotional or intellectual", "is math natural/discovered or created") or more broadly?

More broadly.

Hey mark, long time reader, also long time asker. I like a challenge when deckbuilding. When I first found out about your psychographics, I thought “woah! it even have the same name as me!” (John). Commander helps tickle that itch for me, because I can start off with a dumb premise and try to make that concept as best I can, and since it’s not a competitive format, I know that there will always be SOMEONE with a deck on a similar power level, however bad that terrible deck idea ends up being.This brings me to a qualm that I personally have, and have seen purely anecdotal evidence that other people have too.It feels kinda lame when you guys make a commander that’s just “this is the best commander for X”. More and more we’re getting legends where they’re just the *correct* choice. If I want to build a sultai graveyard deck, Muldrotha is the answer. Nothing tops it, and I doubt anything every will top it. And that’s just one archetype. 5 color sagas? Bombadil. Snow? Jorn and Isu. Flash tribal? Nymris. Sure there are other cards that can be the commander, but you can say that about anything. Sure, I COULD make a Rakdos exile deck with Pavel Maliki in the command zone, but that’s just objectively wrong. The commander is always gonna be prosper. My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to say “how do I make this work” when you’re just handing us the blueprints and all the parts with a step by step instruction booklet on what to do.To be fair, many archetypes have so much innate complexity to them and have reached a critical mass of options where it’s impossible to tell what the “best” option is, as there are so many different facets and roads to go down. Orzhov aristocrats and mono-green stompy are easy examples.But the fact that it isn’t always the case doesn’t change the fact that happens a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way, but I’m also sure that if it was a majority opinion in the community y’all wouldn’t be doing it this much. I just want to know if you have anything to say about this perception that I and many others hold. Thank you for all you do in magic, I hope you respond.

One of the most common requests I get here on the blog is “make this color combination Commander for this particular theme”. Eventually, for some of them, we find an opportunity to make it. We don’t know when that opportunity will arise again. We shouldn’t try to make the best Commander we can for that slot? If it’s too weak, players will just complain and ask we make another one. The reality is a lot of players want prescriptive answers, and there’s no way to make them for the players that want them and not for the players that don’t. The idea is that players who want to do something different have access to the history of Magic to find less obvious answers.

What does Chief of the Edge do that requires it to also be black? I ask in consideration of Question 28. As far as I can see, an anthem is something that could be done in only white.

We *try* to make all multicolored cards mechanically reflect all colors, but it can’t always be done while meeting other constraints of the set. They’ll get tagged by the Council of Colors, but are allowed to exist if there isn’t an easy fix that works for the set. Chief of Edge isn’t that though. It’s a multicolor signpost for a white/black Warrior typal theme. Both colors can grant power to its creatures. Yes, white does it more often, and usually grants all its creatures while black pumps black subsets. It could have been hybrid from a color pie perspective, but most signposts are multicolored.

I assume you've been watching X-Men '97 and enjoying it as much as I have been. What color identity would you ascribe to this incarnation of Magneto?

Magneto, at his core, is about as white/black as it gets.