Were there ever any anti-typal cards in Bloomburrow? It would have been interesting to see how an otter interacts with rabbits, or how bats interact with raccoons, etc.

Making typal work was hard enough without adding cards to discourage it.

the Magic Story Podcast mentioned that in early concepting, Bloomburrow had fifteen focus creature types, with one for each monocolor in addition to one for each color pair. do you know what the layout of creature types was in that fifteen-type framework? (they mentioned Otters were originally mono-Blue, so I'm especially curious what the UR creature type was in that model.)

That model didn’t last very long. We talked about Raccoons being blue/red for a hot second.

Hello Mark! I’m loving Bloomburrow so far, but have only one nagging question scratching at my brain;I love mustelids, so the separation of weasels, otters, and badgers all into their own creature types without being able to really play them together with typeal synergy bothers me immensely. This feels like the hound/dog/wolf problem but like a 100 times worse for me specifically :( Do you know why it was chosen to make them all separate? And, if it was the body shape/habitat thing, might I suggest making martens a creature type, since they’re tree dwelling mustelids, and a lot lankier and longer limbed than ground dwelling weasels?

We tend to use words people are more familiar with, and “mustelid” doesn’t reach that bar.

I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

I wasn't too interested in Bloomburrow, but honestly, the mechanical identity of the set looks stellar so far! I love the gameplay patterns of all ten color pairs, maybe with the exception of Otters being pretty standard for UR, but other than that, I'm officially hooked now! The frogs literally leaping to your hand and back might be my favorites so far!

Glad you like it.

Re: "Bloomburrow is a bigger sweeping change than most worlds, but each world has its own look and feel."

The original question was asking about Bloomburrow LITERALLY changing visitors, e.g. Ral turning into an Otter. The idea of a plane imposing rules to its visitors like that is new, afaik.

I do not know of any other world that does that. For example, I don’t think planeswalkers shrink when traveling to Segovia.

When visitors like Ral leave Bloomburrow, they turn back into Humans right? Or whatever their species is?

Correct. Ral doesn’t stay an Otter.

"If a non-animal enters Bloomburrow, they become an animal" If Ral leaves and returns to Bloomburrow, will he become an otter again?

I believe while on Bloomburrow, he’s an Otter.

Mark, Having been around your blog for a while I know there is a dedicated group desperate for non humanoid planeswalkers. Otter Ral as the only walker feels like a real slap in the face of a good opportunity on bloomburrow. Is there still any desire to fulfill that ask or is the marketing hill you've described too big to climb?

There are a lot of things to balance. I understand if your focus is on a specific change, it hurts when you see an opportunity to meet your desire, but making Magic requires addressing a lot of different audiences and wants.

Can I guess the animals for each color in Bloomburrow? WU: Birds, UB: Bats, BR: Lizards, RG: Raccoons, GW: Rabbits, WB: Badgers, UR: Otters, BG: Squirrels, RW: Mice, and GU: Frogs

Everyone is free to guess. Here’s what I said in today’s panel. 1) There are ten two-color pairs.2) Every one is a different animal. 3) Red/white is Mice.4) We’ve seeded some cards in previous sets.5) I said that Rabbits and Frogs were two of the animals.I won’t tell you if you’re correct, but I enjoy seeing guesses.