Hey Mark! My partner had asked me if MMPR would be capable of becoming a Universes Beyond set, and given that I know nothing about how or why you can/can't work with certain properties to make products, I thought I'd ask you.

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are capable of becoming a Universes Beyond.

My partner loves Neopets, and started playing magic around All Will be One. Any chance of a UB Neopets, in the future? I wonder how much overlap there is between the two in terms of fans.

I don’t know of the chances of a Universes Beyond, but Wizards did make a Neopets trading card game many years ago.

Happy birthday, Mark! I got into Magic with New Phyrexia's Intro deck, but Dark Ascension was the first new set I was around for. I remember for our first few games my brother thought Llanowar Elves searched the deck for a forest each turn. You can imagine I lost more often than not. Dimir is still my favourite color combo from that. Now I'm lucky enough to play magic with my partner of 9 years (today's our anniversary) and two of my dnd friends, and it's been a constant in my life

: )

"Designing cards is different than determining functionality of the format." [In regards to the commander format]But partner and planeswalkers that can be your commander HAVE messed with functionality of the format. The format was designed initially to use a single legendary creature, and now you've made 5 different options that intentionally changed that parameter (planeswalker commanders, partner, partner with, backgrounds, companion). I am not claiming whether those mechanics are bad or good, but you saying Wizards of the Coast has just made cards for EDH but hasn't messed with the functionality of the format feels disingenuous, because that isn't really the case. The line that's being drawn doesn't feel straight, it appears to be quite squiggly and faded at points; that, or it's a result of compromising what can and can't be changed.

Card designs impact formats. Absolutely. That wasn’t what I was saying. I was saying that we don’t make decision about how the format of Commander is structured. For example, I can make all the hybrid cards in the world, but if the team who decides what’s legal in deck construction doesn’t allow a monowhite deck to play a white hybrid card, there isn’t anything I can do about that. Card design impacts formats, but doesn’t determine the essence of how they work.

Clearly for the "Partner with Pirate", you need to dip back into history and make it "Partner with Other Pirate", where it can only partner with other cards with "Partner with Other Pirate". And then errata Shelkin Brownie to also remove "Partner with Other".

: ) Hats off to everyone who gets the reference.

Has there ever been talk to have say, "Partner with [type]" like "Partner with pirate" or something? Or generally, any "Partner with...: not followed by the name of a particular creature?

Partner with an open-ended prompt just causes us problems down the road when making the open-ended prompt. For example, if the partner with Pirate card ends up too strong, we now we have to nerf every Legendary Pirate. It’s just too big a risk. Partner with named card is something we know the ramifications of when we design it.

I know Partner has some issues, but I do hope we continue to see them in small doses. The Vorthos in me can't play them without strong thematic/lore-appropriate pairings. This is especially true of the Commander Legends ones, which feature favorites of mine from the lore that I would love to play, like Sengir, the Dark Baron and Serra, Radiant Archangel

Partner with is still a tool available to us.

Preface to say I don't know how combinatorics work, but can you explain why they impact partner-commander power level? The most recent partner commander, Francisco, is a mono-black pirate typal card, and I don't understand how his mere existence could affect the power of a deck that has, as a random example, Yoshimaru and Slurrk as its commanders.

Let me explain. Combinatorics is the math of how things combine. Let’s say I have two cards with partner. There’s only one combination: 1+2. Now imagine I have three cards with partner. Now there are three combinations: 1+2, 1+3, & 2+3. Let’s keep going.Four cards: six combinations Five cards: ten combinations Six cards: fifteen combinations Seven cards: twenty-one combinationsEight cards: twenty-eight combinationsNine cards: thirty-six combinationsTen cards: forty-five combinations Each time you add another card it adds whatever that number card is (call it N) by N-1. What this means is the numbers get larger and larger with each new card you add. The third card added just two new combinations, but the fiftieth adds forty-nine more. Power level follows this progression. To make the math simple, let’s say 10% of the combinations are strong enough to be competitive. As you get more and more cards, the number of competitive card combinations goes up faster. That’s was the crux of my point. The more partner cards we make, the more combinations increase and the greater likelihood of things breaking. And it gets worse the more cards you have. We don’t look at it as any one card in a vacuum. We examine the mathematical probability of problem combinations getting created.

Here are some numbers to illustrate your point about the danger of making more Partner cards. There are currently 58 Commander legal cards with Partner (not including Partner with), which allows for 1653 possible pairs. If you were to make even just a new cycle of 5 Partners, that would add 300 new possible pairs.

FYI

Council of colors question. Black/Green cards sometimes show a subversion of nature. For example, Dark Heart of the Woods and Squandered Resources both deal with the abuse of natural resources, and Grim Feast seems to imply cannibalism. Philosophically, why is Green OK with partnering with Black to produce such effects?

It’s less that green chooses to partner with black, and more that that philosophy requires a combination of black and green philosophies.