What makes a setting/plane feel like its own thing, not just "Magic does X"?

It’s very subjective. Bloomburrow is as much “Magic does X” as Murders at Karlov Manor or Outlaws of Thunder Junction, but it feels different to a lot of players.

When you were creating Outlaws of Thunder Junction, where you ever concerned that when people talked about drafting OTJ that some older players might be worried about seeing UG madness?

: )For those non-old timers out there. Blocks were often nicknamed with the first letter of each set in the block. So Odyssey/Torment/Judgment draft was often called OTJ. One its major draft archetype was green/blue madness.

I feel like a lot of established MtG players underestimate how much the genre mashup and Universes Beyond sets expand to new demographics. A friend and I 100% started playing Magic because of Outlaws of Thunder Junction. We are now SUPER EXCITED for Bloomburrow and Duskmourne too. (I was exposed to Magic in college but that was a decade+ ago.)
It's not an exaggeration to say that without the cowboys set, I would not be playing Magic right now.
Anyway just wanted to share that positive message.

Thanks for the message.

"The flavor [for once per turn card draw] is white draws long, that is it sets up the proper condition and then gets rewarded with card draw over time. It’s slow, methodical card draw." My issue is that all colors have "once per turn" effects already. Heck, Dimir had a set theme's worth of it in OTJ with Committing a Crime cards, and some of those were even card draw. It feels less flavorful and more like a stopgap for card balance.

The goal is to make decisions that make sense for how that color needs to draw, not to create a situation that’s unlike other effects. In other words, the feel of gameplay trumps uniqueness.

Hi Mark! Personal opinions aside, how do you determine if the success of a set comes from the cards (power level and playability) or if it comes from the flavour (aesthetic and lore)? Just as an example I absolutely LOVED the otj draft and cards but the whole goofy cowboy thing didn't worked for me at all. As always, thanks for your hard work

We do a lot of market research where we ask about all the components.

"Absolute faith. The audience is *so* excited for Bloomburrow we didn’t feel a need to focus on it." I must admit that this was not my experience. I was extremely excited to tune into the preview panel to get a sense of the cards I'm next going to open, draft, and play with. The panel's virtual lack of Bloomburrow content dampened my enthusiasm and made it feel like the extremely fast sprint between magic sets is even faster than it currently is. We were getting AC spoilers a week ago.

The preview panel at Chicago Magic Con (which I was on) had the same effect. Yeah, we showed cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, the next set, but everyone wanted to talk about Bloomburrow. The unknown thing just pulls attention.

As someone who primarily plays commander I really dislike how it's been stapled on to Freerunning. Cards don't need to work in every deck. In fact, it feels much more rewarding when you stumble across cards that only work in the deck you're trying to build. Freerunning as an assassin's only thing would've been great. Cool mechanic, cool flavor, fits the IP. Including commander makes it feel forced and too direct. I get commander is the most popular format and you want to cater to it, but this is the absolute worst way to do that in my opinion. Just make cool cards with niche abilities and have them be legendary from time to time.

Assassin typal is pretty narrow. Note how Outlaws of Thunder Junction had to also attach Rogue and Mercenary and Pirates and Warlock to make it mechanically relevant. (There were only 87 Assassins in the game - not counting Changelings - before Assassin’s Creed released.)It just isn’t good game design to make a mechanic (the only new one, no less) one that can only be played in under .1% of decks. But it’s Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s in the title. It’s the core role of the game. So Corey (the lead design of the set) decided to find additional mechanical space to broaden it. Commander traditionally has trouble with aggression (aka not a lot of Commanders attack regularly) so Corey found a way to make the mechanic relevant in Commander.Even though every Commander deck has a Commander, free running doesn’t push in a way that makes every deck want or need it. I hear the message that some people don’t want us to design cards for Commander, but it’s a 800-pound gorilla that dominates tabletop play. If you go to many game stores, it’s the only pick-up game you can find. So to make our new mechanic (again, the only new mechanic in the whole set) something unplayable in our most popular format isn’t very viable. There is a truism in game design. “You design for the game being played.” You have to understand how your cards will be used by the players and lean into it. There are so many formats you can play that we (mostly) don’t design for, if that’s important to you. Magic is great in that you the player have so much agency in how you play. But we’re going to design for the format that dominates tabletop play.

This is one of those questions that might be impossible to answer. Other than power level, why is one set's draft environment more fun than another set's? Take MH3, which I've enjoyed more than OTJ, which I liked more than MKM (although I enjoyed both). I think this is a common sentiment. Did MH3 get more time or resources than the other two? Is it just luck of the draw in a "sometimes they hit, sometimes, they don't" way? When an MKM is going out the door, do y'all know it's not quite as fun?

Modern Horizon sets are of a higher complexity, and have a strong nostalgia element, so appeal strongly to players that enjoy that. We learned from Time Spiral block that it’s a minority, so it’s not something we do in premier sets, but a great choice for a supplemental one.We ship every set with the goal of it being as fun as possible, knowing that different sets will appeal more to different players. We just try to mix it up, so everyone gets sets that maximize their enjoyment.

Will Homarids eventually get the same treatment as Cephalids getting their creature type updated to Lobster, or are there too few of them to warrant that change? We did just get one in OTJ with Deepmuck Desperado. I always associate Cephalids and Homarids so I wonder why one is getting an update and not the other.

I do think Homarids will eventually get changed. To Crab is my best guess.

I've really enjoyed OTJ, both mechanically and flavorfully. Thank you, and please apply high fives to the creative team as well.

Will do.