At the prerelease one player had 7 Slime against Humanity (2 were foil) it was really impressive watch their opponant just unable to really manage it, kind of reminded me of Pack Rat. But the two most egregious deck was the ultimate winner with 4 mythics and 4 rares with 2 copies of Aurelia's Vindicator, Incinerator of the Guilty and Argus Kos, then double Elegant Parlor, Wojek Investigator and Krenko, with 3 copies of Lighting Helix to really round out the deck. While my first round opponant got dual lands for 5 rares, Reenact the Crime and Archdruids Charm, they had only 4 removal and only 2 flyers in their whole pull. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes Oko shows up and steals all your playable rares. Overall the games were some of the most fun nearly every player I spoke with had in years. Great job.

Glad you enjoyed it.

The Mechanical Color Pie describes the "Warlord" ability as "This creature's power and toughness is equal to the number of creatures you control," and it's primary in white and secondary in green. Does that ability also include cards like Pack Rat that only count certain types of creatures, or are those available in any color if they count an appropriate creature type?

Caring about how many particular creatures of a certain creature types there are can be in any color of that creature type is focused in that color.

When a card refers to a specific thing it's copying I think printing those tokens would be incredibly helpful to game states. What is the argument against doing so? (Still sad there weren't Pack Rat tokens, as boards got messy at the time)

Tokens with mana costs get confused for cards.

Can you tell us about your opinion about pack rat from a design perspective?

I think it’s a neatly designed, fun card that got pushed a little too hard by development.

Does pack rat name comes from Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra's group)?

I assume they both come from the same source - what you call a bunch of rats.

Why is Pack Rat Black? (It feels more white or green mechanically to me).

It’s top down rat flavor and rats are black,

So Llanowar Mentor and Kher Keep (and... is there more to the cycle?) make tokens that are copies of older creatures. Pack Rat makes a copy of itself. Cackling Counterpart / Seance / etc make copies of a card that is already in a game zone somewhere. Is there any reason why the Llanowar Mentor ability couldn't return someday, or are you just saying there's no plan for it?

EDIT: Tumblr’s acting up again. The question is: Why can’t we just change all the old instants and sorceries to have subtypes is that’s what we want to do? We don’t want a game where many of the cards don’t do what’s actually written on them. We consider errata to be a huge barrier which we are very cautious with.

Thanks for pack rat! Die in pain!

I do this blog every day on my own time because I believe I am a better designer for having a close connection with my audience. I also feel that having good two-way communication can improve the quality of the experience for all of you as well. As part of this, I am more than happy to take criticism. I honestly want to know when some aspect of the product upsets you because having the information will in total help me provide all of you with a better game. (Although note that people complaining is not unto itself always a reason to change things.) All I ask is one thing. Please be polite. “I find Pack Rat to really lessen the overall Return to Ravnica limited environment. My personal enjoyment of the limited play has gone down specifically because of that one card. Please rethink the next time you are going to do something like that.” I am an actual person with real feelings. Yes, I’ve grown a thick skin over the years, but that doesn’t make it okay to be mean. I’m holding up my end of this relationship. I ask that you all hold up yours.  I do want to stress that the vast majority of you are very polite so please understand that I am talking to a small minority.

What would you tell the player who wants to keep playing Magic but hates the direction Wizards is taking the game? (ridiculous creatures, nerfing control cards, printing cards like Pack Rat to ruin limited) I find myself in that camp now.

Magic is a pendulum that continually swings. If you don’t like the game where it is, it’s always going to keep changing. Now my comments about your comments. “Ridiculous creatures” - Magic’s creatures of today are nowhere as broken as the spells of yesterday. “nerfing control” - Yet control decks keep winning. I think we’ll stop nerfing control once control is actually nerfed. “printing cards like Pack Rat” - Magic is not just a limited game. Pack Rat is beloved by many. We have to be able to print cards for other formats and put them in booster packs. I don’t mind arguing about whether that card should have been mythic rare but there are going to be rares that are very strong in limited.

In hindsight, do you think Pack Rat was a (development) mistake?

I don’t know. Ask a developer.